Vernon Lee

-
Standard Name: Lee, Vernon
Birth Name: Violet Paget
Pseudonym: Vernon Lee
VL 's writing career spanned more than five decades during the later the nineteenth century and the earlier twentieth. She wrote critical monographs, essays, and reviews (on aesthetics, politics, and history), as well as short stories, novels, and drama. Much of her work is currently out of print. However two books published in 2003 mark a renewed interest in Lee's life's work: Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography by Vineta Colby , and Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual by Christa Zorn .
Head-and-shoulders portrait sketch of Vernon Lee by John Singer Sargent, done in a single three-hour sitting, 1881. Her hair is short and dark; she wears a black sweater over a white shirt, and wire-rimmed spectacles. Tate Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Mathilde Blind
Nothing is known of MB 's sexuality, but the homosociality of some of her love poetry and her connection to Vernon Lee 's circle is suggestive.
Dedications A. Mary F. Robinson
Several of these poems are addressed to her friend Vernon Lee .
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell, 1995.
538
Dedications A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR published a book of criticism on French literature, The French Procession, A Pageant of Great Writers, with a dedication to Vernon Lee .
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
Family and Intimate relationships A. Mary F. Robinson
By 22 July 1882 AMFR and Vernon Lee were staying for a holiday at a rented cottage in Sussex.
Zorn, Christa. Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual. Ohio University Press, 2003.
8
Reportedly, Lee whisked her friend away from London because she felt that the literary...
Family and Intimate relationships Mathilde Blind
MB also had a half-brother from her mother's second marriage, Rudolph Blind , who was an artist. Vernon Lee pronounced him an awful little snob.
qtd. in
Demoor, Marysa. “Women Poets as Critics in the Athenæum: Ungendered Anonymity Unmasked”. Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol.
24
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 51-71.
53, 69n11
Family and Intimate relationships Amy Levy
AL addressed letters and love-poems to the writer Vernon Lee , whom she had met that spring in Florence, and for whom she cherished an unrequited love.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
254-5, 119-21
Family and Intimate relationships A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR married James Darmesteter after a brief courtship; it was said that she had proposed to him, in August 1887, shortly after their first meeting at the British Museum .
Sources disagree on the date...
Family and Intimate relationships A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR had met the poet Vernon Lee by 1878 (a little earlier than is often supposed), the year she turned twenty-one, since her first publication includes poems addressed to Lee. They became close friends and...
Friends, Associates Linda Villari
LV and her husband were both friends of Vernon Lee , accepting her hospitality and moving in the same circles.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
96
Lee corresponded with LV from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...
Friends, Associates William Morris
WM 's associates included George Bernard Shaw , Annie Besant , Emery Walker , Vernon Lee , as well as Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst . His friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti ended in 1875, as...
Friends, Associates Susan Tweedsmuir
ST 's parents made connections through friendship as remarkable as those made for them by family descent. Her mother was a friend of many writers and intellectuals of both sexes, including Marie Belloc Lowndes ,...
Friends, Associates Henry James
HJ 's circle of acquaintance in the world of letters and the theatre was very wide. As well as men of letters such as Edmund Gosse , it included a great many women writers, among...
Friends, Associates Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird (famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
qtd. in
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
38
Friends, Associates Ethel Smyth
ES 's many other friends included writer Maurice Baring , Lady Ponsonby , the Empress Eugénie of France, Vernon Lee , and Vita Sackville-West .
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber, 1984.
57, 65, 174, 200
St John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth. Longmans, Green, 1959.
117-18
Friends, Associates A. Mary F. Robinson
Vernon Lee , likely in love with AMFR herself, suffered a breakdown when her friend's engagement to Darmesteter was announced, and after this she never fully regained her health. The two friends, however, remained in...

Timeline

1895: Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began...

Writing climate item

1895

Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began publishing The Bibelot. A Reprint of Poetry & Prose for Book Lovers, a monthly series later collected as an annual volume, of exquisitely produced editions in tiny press-runs.
“An Exhibition of Books from the Press of Thomas Bird Mosher, from the collection of Norman H. Strouse, January 16th - March 12th 1967”. The Free Library of Philadelphia, Logan Square.

5 March 1946: Winston Churchill made a famous speech in...

National or international item

5 March 1946

Winston Churchill made a famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he described an iron curtain coming down across Europe, dividing the east from the west.
Cook, Chris, and John, 1946 - Stevenson. The Longman Handbook of Modern British History 1714-1987. 2nd ed., Longman, 1988.
32
Steinberg, Sigfrid Henry. Historical Tables: 58 BC-AD 1985. 11th ed., Garland Publishing, 1986.
252
Nairn, Tom. “Where’s the omelette?”. London Review of Books, Vol.
30
, No. 20, 23 Oct. 2008, pp. 19-20.
19
Ascherson, Neal. “Wedgism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
31
, No. 14, 23 July 2009, pp. 13-15.
13

Texts

Lee, Vernon. “A Culture-Ghost”. Fraser’s Magazine, Vol.
103
, No. 23, pp. 1-29.
Lee, Vernon. Althea. Osgood and McIlvaine, 1894.
Lee, Vernon. Baldwin. T. Fisher Unwin, 1886.
Lee, Vernon, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. Beauty and Ugliness. John Lane, 1912.
Lee, Vernon. Belcaro. W. Satchell, 1881.
Lee, Vernon. Euphorion. T. Fisher Unwin, 1884, 2 vols.
Lee, Vernon. Gospels of Anarchy. T. Fisher Unwin, 1908.
Lee, Vernon. Juvenilia. T. Fisher Unwin, 1887, 2 vols.
Lee, Vernon. “Les aventures d’une pièce de monnaie”. La Famille, No. 10; 12; 14, 1870.
Lee, Vernon. Miss Brown. Blackwood and Sons, 1884.
Lee, Vernon. Music and its Lovers. Editor Willis, Irene Cooper, G. Allen and Unwin, 1932.
Lee, Vernon. Ottilie. T. Fisher Unwin, 1883.
Lee, Vernon. Peace with Honour. Union of Democratic Control, 1915.
Lee, Vernon. “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”. The Yellow Book, Vol.
10
, pp. 289-44.
Lee, Vernon. Proteus. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner; E. P. Dutton, 1925.
Lee, Vernon. Renaissance Fancies and Studies. Smith, Elder, 1895.
Lee, Vernon. Satan the Waster. John Lane, 1920.
Lee, Vernon. Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. W. Satchell, 1880.
Lee, Vernon, and Maxwell Armfield. The Ballet of the Nations. Chatto and Windus, 1915.
Lee, Vernon. The Countess of Albany. W. H. Allen, 1884.
Lee, Vernon. The Handling of Words. John Lane, 1923.
Lee, Vernon. The Poet’s Eye. Hogarth Press, 1926.
Birch, Sarah. The Prince of the Hundred Soups. Editor Lee, Vernon, T. Fisher Unwin, 1883.
Lee, Vernon. The Psychology of an Art Writer. David Zwimmer Books, 2018.
Lee, Vernon. “Tuscan Peasant Plays”. Fraser’s Magazine, Vol.
95
, No. 15, pp. 224-34.