Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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
.
Our Lady of the Broken Heart, the garden play mentioned in the volume title, is set in a public Italian garden during the seventeenth century, or any time.
Robinson, A. Mary F. Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play. T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.
LAT
's storyThe Captain's Bride was included in the collection The Witching Time: Tales for the Year's End, edited by Henry Norman
and Austin Dobson
and published at New York in 1887. Stories...
Textual Production
Amy Levy
AL
had told Vernon Lee
that she planned to write a novel in which Lee would be not the heroine, but the hero!
qtd. in
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
266
It is not clear whether or not this was an early...
CPG
's correspondence with Vernon Lee
(on whom she was an important influence) survives among Lee's papers at Somerville College
, Oxford.
Zorn, Christa. Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual. Ohio University Press, 2003.
182n9
Scharnhorst writes that her papers once in her daughter's hands were...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Michael Field
Both Edith and Katharine contributed to this extraordinary journal, giving their impressions of travel, art, religion, death, and love. They also record encounters with their literary contemporaries, including Robert Browning
, George Meredith
, John Ruskin
Travel
Mary Kingsley
During the 1880's each of MK
's two attempts to go away on holiday coincided with sudden relapses in her mother's condition. Within two days of her first holiday, a visit to Wales with...
Travel
A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR
and her friend Vernon Lee
were in Sienna, to which they probably travelled from Florence.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
Travel
A. Mary F. Robinson
After a short visit to Paris during the summer of 1887, AMFR
and Vernon Lee
met up and went to Italy, where they stayed in Florence with Lee's family. This was probably their last time...
Wealth and Poverty
Ouida
She did not, however, have enough money. Oscar Wilde
took it upon himself to organize a fundraising drive to discharge her unpaid bill at the Langham Hotel
. As late as June, Vernon Lee
reported...
