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, and was a substantive figure among the 'decadents' of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s; she contributed to The Yellow Book. She was a follower (and for a while a pursuer) 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 in Florence.

Works

• Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880)
• Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century Idyl (1883)
• The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet Show in Narrative (1883)
• Belcaro, Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions (1883)
• The Countess of Albany (1884)
• Miss Brown (1884) novel
• Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance(1884)
• Baldwin: Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations (1886)
• A Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story (1886) novella, also Oke of Okehurst, Alice Oke
• Juvenilia, Being a second series of essays on sundry aesthetical questions (1887)
• Hauntings. Fantastic Stories (1890)
• Vanitas: Polite Stories (1892)
• Althea: Dialogues on Aspirations & Duties (1894)
• Renaissance Fancies And Studies Being A Sequel To Euphorion (1895)
• Art and Life (1896)
• Limbo and Other Essays (1897)
• Genius Loci (1899) travel
• The Child In The Vatican (1900)
• In Umbria: A Study of Artistic Personality (1901)
• Chapelmaster Kreisler A Study of Musical Romanticists (1901)
• Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh Coast in the Eighteenth Century (1903)
• The Legend of Madame Krasinska (1903)
• Ariadne in Mantua: a Romance in Five Acts (1903)
• Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of life (1904)
• Pope Jacynth - And Other Fantastic Tales (1904)
• The Enchanted Woods (1905) essays
• The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (1906)
• Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child, an eighteenth-century legend (1906)
• The Spirit of Rome (1906)
• Ravenna and Her Ghosts (1907)
• The Sentimental Traveller . Notes on Places (1908)
• Gospels of Anarchy & Other Contemporary Studies (1908)
• Laurus Nobili: Chapters on Art and Life (1909)
• In Praise of Old Gardens (1912) with others
• Vital Lies: Studies of Some Varieties of Recent Obscurantism ( 1912).
• The Beautiful. An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics (1913)
• The Tower of the Mirrors and Other Essays on the Spirit of Places (1914)
• Louis Norbert. A Two-fold Romance (1914) novel
• The Ballet of the Nations. A Present-Day Morality (1915) illustrations by Maxfield Armfield
• Satan the Waster: A Philosophic War Trilogy (1920)
• Proteus or The Future Of Intelligence (1925)
• The Golden Keys (1925) essays
• The Poet's Eye (Hogarth Press, 1926)
• For Maurice. Five Unlikely Stories (1927)
• Music and its Lovers (1932)
• Snake Lady and Other Stories (1954)
• Supernatural Tales (1955)
• The Virgin of the Seven Daggers - And Other Chilling Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1962)

References

• Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935 (1964) Peter Gunn
• Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography (2003) Vineta Colby