Her travel novels met with much acclaim and praise, but her forays into short stories and different forms of criticism seemed to receive equal measures of love and hate. The response to Vernon Lee’s work in the late 19th, early 20th century was very mixed. Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) by John Singer Sargent, 1889. She was a part of movements of her time, contributing heavily in terms of criticism and innovation, while also paving the way for new theories and interpretations. Lee’s work was profound, both in her time and now. Vernon Lee died in 1935 in Italy.Īlthough not much of her work can be seen in modern adaptations, it certainly affected literature of the 19th and 20th century, including the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” that Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892.
The two women came up with a new idea of psychological aesthetics: “The spectators ‘emphatise’ with works of art when they call up memories and association and cause often unconscious bodily changes in posture and breathing.” This was the introduction of the German concept of Einfühlung, or empathy, into the concept of aesthetics England. During their relationship, Lee began her extensive work on aesthetics, something Kit was able to help with. Lee and Kit were very close companions, and the two women traveled and wrote together until 1897. It was in 1887 that Lee began a new friendship with Clementina (Kit) Anstruther-Thomson. The two women met at a drawing-room party and were inseparable until 1887, when the heartbreak of Mary’s marriage to James Darmsteter ended her even her friendship with Vernon Lee. Her first romantic relationship was with a woman named Annie Meyers that she met in 1870’s and ended in 1881, when she met Mary Robinson. She herself was a lesbian and had three women that she was connected with during her lifetime. Lee never openly discussed homosexuality in her work, yet there are many cases where it can be evident that an underlying tone is being hinted at. Her preoccupation with psychology was seen in her blatant criticism of World War I in Satan the Waster (1920). Lee also wrote dramas, such as Ariadne in Mantua (1903) and short stories, some of which are collected in Hauntings (1890), which contains “Oke of Okehurst” and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” which is a short story that originally appeared in the famous The Yellow Book.
Lee was also friends with other people involved in the movement, such as: John Singer Sarget, Robert Browning, William Morri, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and Edward Burne-Jones. The thing that set her apart from Pater is that she called for social action in the Aesthetic movement while he did not. She met Pater in 1881 in England, just after she made the acquaintance of his distinguished supporter Oscar Wilde. She was classified in the same group as Walter Pater and John Addington as people who had influence on the Italian Renaissance, evident in Euphorion (1884) and Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895). She followed this with Belcaro, a collection of essays about art that published one year after her rise to fame.
When Lee wrote her book on music in 1880 called Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, her reputation in London spiked. She even created her own genre, called “genius loci” or “spirit of places”, and wrote seven works between 18 that fall under this genre. Lee wrote forty-five major works during her lifetime, in many areas including: short stories, biographies, dramas, essays. The first time she used her pseudonym was when she published works on art and aesthetics in 18 in Frazer’s Magazine. Violet Paget adopted her pseudonym Vernon Lee by taking the surname of her half-sister Eugene Lee-Hamilton. At 14, she published Biographie d’une monnaie. She started to write early on in her life, eventually writing in four different languages: German, Italian, English, and French. Later on, she wrote about the psychological effects that places have on individuals. Her educators were her mother, half-brother, and governesses, as well as extensive travels she did throughout Europe with her family. Vernon Lee was born Violet Paget on Octoin Château Saint-Léonard, France.