Vernon Lee

Vernon Lee was the nom de plume of Violet Paget (1856–1935), a writer of astonishing range and audacity whose published works include historical studies of art and music, dense treatises on aesthetic psychology, acclaimed travel essays, meditations on gardens, pacifist and feminist pamphlets, and supernatural tales. Her versatility is difficult for us to comprehend, which is one reason why she is not as widely read now as she deserves. Already in her later years, she presented the avatar of a bygone intellectual moment. In a 1920 review of her political-philosophical allegory Satan, the Waster, Bernard Shaw (in fact also born in 1856) saluted her as a figure of “the old guard of Victorian cosmopolitan intellectualism.”