Lee Vernon

Photo Lee Vernon
Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget (1856 – 1935). She is now known mostly for her supernatural fiction; she wrote also essays and poetry; she contributed to The Yellow Book. She was a follower of Walter Pater. She was born at Château St Leonard, Boulogne, France. She was the half-sister of Eugene Lee-Hamilton, adapting her pseudonym from his surname; her mother was widowed in 1852, and her father was Eugene's tutor. She spent time in London, and later resided on the hillside just outside of Florence, in the Palmerino villa, from 1889 until her death in 1935, with a brief interruption during the war. Her library was left to the British Institute of Florence and can still be inspected by visitors. In Florence she knit a lasting friendship with the painter Telemaco Signorini and the learned Mario Praz, who at that time was very young; she encouraged his love of learning and of the english literature. She played very well the harpsichord, and her appreciation of ancient music transpires in her major work, "Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy"; this book was widely influential. In the 1907 preface to the Studies, she recalls one anecdote about her love of music: when she was a little girl, her mother came across a bundle of sheets of eighteenth century music; among them, some airs of the Saxon, Hasse. While her mother sat at the piano trying to decypher those old keys, she was so nervous that she had to escape to the garden: she feared lest the famous Hasse failed her expectactions. The first notes of the air (Pallido il Sole, one of the legendary airs sung by Farinelli) reached her through the open window, and filled her with enchantment. An engaged feminist, she always dressed á la garçonne, and was a member of the Union of democratic control[1]. Her literary works explored the themes of haunting and possession. The English writer and translator, Montague Summers described Vernon Lee as "the greatest [...] of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction."[2] "The Lie of the Land", in the voume "Limbo, and other Essays", has been one of the most influential essays on landscaping. Additionally she wrote, along with her friend and colleague Henry James, critically about the relationship between the writer and his/her audience pioneering the concept of criticism and expanding the idea of critical assessment among all the arts as relating to an audience's (or her personal) response. She was a strong, though vexed, proponent of the Aesthetic movement, and after a lengthy written correspondence met the movement's effective leader, Walter Pater, in England in 1881, just after encountering his famous disciple Oscar Wilde. Her interpretation of the movement called for social action, setting her apart from both Wilde and Pater.
add to favoritesadd

What readers are saying

What do you think? Write your own comment on this book!

write a comment

What readers are saying

What do you think? Write your own comment on this author!

write a comment

What readers are saying

What do you think? Write your own comment on this author!

write a comment

What do you think? Write your own comment on this author

Do you want to read a book that interests you? It’s EASY!

Create an account and send a request for reading to other users on the Webpage of the book!