Novels
- A Phantom Lover (1886)
Collections
- Hauntings (1890)
- Pope Jacynth (1907)
- For Maurice (1927)
- The Virgin of the Seven Daggers (1955)
- Supernatural Tales (1987)
- A Phantom Lover: and Other Dark Tales (2020)
Novellas
- A Culture Ghost (1881)
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Novellas Book Covers
Vernon Lee Books Overview
A Phantom Lover
Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget 1856 1935. She is known mostly for her supernatural fiction. She also wrote essays and poetry. She contributed to The Yellow Book and was a follower of Walter Pater. Her literary works explored the themes of haunting and possession. She was responsible for introducing the concept of empathy into the English language. Empathy was a key concept in Lee’s psychological aesthetics which she developed on the basis of prior work by Theodor Lipps. Her response to aesthetics interpreted art as a mental and corporeal experience. This was a significant contribution to the philosophy of art which has been largely neglected. 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 as*sessment among all the arts as relating to an audience’s or her personal response. She was a strong proponent of the Aesthetic movement. Among her famous works are: A Phantom Lover 1890, Hauntings 1890, and Art and Life 1896.
Hauntings
Violet Paget spoke four languages, began her career as a journalist at the age of 13, suffered from maladies that were probably psychosomatic, and may have secretly been a lesbian. She was, in other words, the perfect Victorian lady writer of gothic horror, a mystery and a scandal in her own right. Though not well remembered today, Paget’s work often likened to the works of Henry James whom she admired, and even dedicated a novel to is worth seeking out for lovers of the genre. Her ghost stories are, by turns, hauntingly ambiguous tales about love conflated with mental illness, femme fatales, confused sexuality, and women sacrificed on the altar of marriage. This 1890 collection, considered by some her finest, includes the tales: ‘Amour: Dure: Passages from the Diary of Spiridion Trepka’ ‘Oke of Okehurst’ ‘A Wicked Voice’ ‘Vernon Lee’ was the pseudonym of British writer VIOLET PAGET 1865 1935, who wrote numerous novels, essays, travelogues, and works of literary criticism.
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