Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget (1856–1935) – a prolific author best known for her supernatural fiction, her support of the Aesthetic Movement and her radical polemics. She was also an active letter writer whose correspondents include many well-known figures in fin de siècle intellectual circles across Europe. However, until now no attempt has been made to make these letters widely available in their complete form. This multi-volume scholarly edition presents a comprehensive selection of her English, French, Italian, and German correspondence — compiled from more than 30 archives worldwide — that reflect her wide variety of interests and occupations as a Woman of Letters and contributor to scholarship and political activism. Letters written in a language other than English have been expertly translated by scholars Sophie Geoffroy (from the French), Crystal Hall (from the Italian), and Christa Zorn (from the German). The edition focuses on those letters concerning the writing, ideas and aesthetics that influenced Lee’s articles, books and stories. Full transcriptions of some 500 letters, covering the years 1856-1935, are arranged in chronological order along with a newly written introduction that explains their context and identifies the recipients, friends and colleagues mentioned. Since scholarship on Lee’s critical and creative output is still in the beginning stages, these letters will serve a purpose to students and researchers in a number of academic fields. In this first volume, tracing the years 1856– 1884, the assembled letters cover the beginnings of her career, encompassing her first publication, visits to London and encounters with some of the important artistic figures of the time. As her career begins to blossom, the letters also reflect the expansion of her subject matter from cultural studies and art history to novels and aesthetic philosophy. Correspondents include Lee’s parents, Matilda and Henry Paget; her brother the poet Eugene Lee-Hamilton; English poet Mary Robinson; English authors Henrietta Jenkin and Linda Villari; and Italian writers Enrico Nencioni, Mario Pratesi, and Angelo De Gubernatis, among others.

Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget (1856–1935) – a prolific author best known for her supernatural fiction and her radical polemics. She was also an active letter writer whose correspondents include many well-known figures in fin de siècle intellectual circles across Europe. However, until now no attempt has been made to make these letters widely available in their complete form. This multi-volume scholarly edition presents a comprehensive selection of her English, French, Italian, and German correspondence — compiled from more than 30 archives worldwide — that reflect her wide variety of interests and occupations as a Woman of Letters and contributor to scholarship and political activism. Letters written in a language other than English have been expertly translated by scholars Sophie Geoffroy (from the French), Crystal Hall (from the Italian), and Christa Zorn (from the German). The edition focuses on those letters concerning the writing, ideas and aesthetics that influenced Lee’s articles, books and stories. Full transcriptions of some 500 letters, covering the years 1856-1935, are arranged in chronological order along with newly written introductions that explain their context and identifies the recipients, friends and colleagues mentioned. Since scholarship on Lee’s critical and creative output is still in the beginning stages, these letters will serve a purpose to students and researchers in a number of academic fields. In this second volume, covering the years 1885–1889, the 421 assembled letters follow Violet Paget-Vernon Lee in her early thirties. Recovering from the stinging reception of her first novel and from Annie Meyer’s death, she turns to essay writing on aesthetics and ethics and ghost stories. After Mary Robinson’s engagement to marry French orientalist Prof. Darmesteter, she travels to Spain, Gibraltar and Tangiers and briefly falls under the spell of the Orient. She also takes a liking to Scotland, and many of her close friends are Scottish --Alice Callander, Lady "Archie" (Janey Sevilla Archibald Campbell)—and so is her future partner Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. The letters reflect the expansion of her subject matter from cultural studies, art history and aesthetic philosophy. Her charity work in hospitals in Florence and her readings in Political Economy lead her thinking towards social reform and political issues. Her brother’s mental illness and her own breakdown bring about an awareness of body and mind balance and a taste for outdoor pursuits (mountaineering; bicycling; horse riding; swimming) and for experimental psychology (rotating mirrors; hypnosis) and therapies (hydrotherapy). The Pagets move away from the city center of Florence into the Villa Il Palmerino, then in the countryside, where both Eugene and Vernon recover. Correspondents include Lee’s parents, Matilda and Henry Ferguson Paget; her step-brother poet Eugene Lee-Hamilton; English poetess Mary Robinson; English poet Robert Browning; British novelist and journalist Ellen Mary Abdy-Williams; British social reform activist and editor Percy William Bunting; Irish journalist and activist Frances Power Cobbe; Irish scholar and novelist Bella Duffy; British eugenicist Karl Pearson; British publisher William Blackwood; Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson; American novelist Henry James; American connoisseur and arts patron Isabella Stuart Gardner; French translator and critic Marie-Thérèse Blanc ("Th. Bentzon"); Lady Louisa Wolseley; Irish historian and activist Alice Stopford-Green; Italian Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi; Italian poet, writer and critic Enrico Nencioni; Italian novelist, essayist and critic Mario Pratesi; Italian editor and man of letters Francesco Protonotari; Italian painter Telemaco Signorini.

Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget - a prolific author best known for her supernatural fiction, her support of the Aesthetic Movement and her radical polemics. She was an active correspondent who included many well-known figures among her circle. This scholarly edition of her letters makes a selection from more than 30 archives worldwide.

Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget – a prolific author best known for her supernatural fiction, her support of the Aesthetic Movement and her radical polemics. She was an active correspondent who included many well-known figures among her circle. This scholarly edition of her letters makes a selection from more than 30 archives worldwide.

I entered the church...It struck me suddenly that all this crowd of men and women standing all round, these priests chanting and moving about the altar, were dead... Vernon Lee was a polymath whose copious writings include deeply learned studies of art, music, literature, and history, but also a small but exquisitely crafted group of Gothic tales, most of which first appeared in fin de siècle periodicals including the iconic Yellow Book. In these stories of obsession and possession, transgressive desire reaches out from the past -- through a haunting portrait, a murdered poet's lock of hair, the uncanny voice of a diabolical castrato -- dragging Lee's protagonists to their doom. Among those haunted by Lee's 'spurious ghosts' was Henry James, who praised her 'gruesome, graceful...ingenious tales, full of imagination'. This new edition includes Lee's landmark 1890 collection Hauntings complete, along with six additional tales and the 1880 essay 'Faustus and Helena', in which Lee probes the elusive nature of the supernatural as a 'vital...fluctuating...potent' force that resists definite representation. Aaron Worth's contextual introduction, drawing upon Lee's newly published letters, reassesses her place in the pantheon of the fantastic. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

What is 'style', and how does it relate to thought in language? It has often been treated as something merely linguistic, independent of thought, ornamental; stylishness for its own sake. Or else it has been said to subserve thought, by mimicking, delineating, or heightening ideas that are already expressed in the words. This ambitious and timely book explores a third, more radical possibility in which style operates as a verbal mode of thinking through. Rather than figure thought as primary and pre-verbal, and language as a secondary delivery system, style is conceived here as having the capacity to clarify or generate thinking. The book's generic focus is on non-fiction prose, and it looks across the long nineteenth century. Leading scholars survey twenty authors to show where writers who have gained reputations as either 'stylists' or as 'thinkers' exploit the interplay between 'the what' and 'the how' of their prose. The study demonstrates how celebrated stylists might, after all, have thoughts worth attending to, and that distinguished thinkers might be enriched for us if we paid more due to their style. More than reversing the conventional categories, this innovative volume shows how 'style' and 'thinking' can be approached as a shared concern. At a moment when, especially in nineteenth-century studies, interest in style is re-emerging, this book revaluates some of the most influential figures of that age, re-imagining the possible alliances, interplays, and generative tensions between thinking, thinkers, style, and stylists.

The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.

Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.

Sarah Green shows how late Victorian Decadent literature paradoxically treats sexual restraint as healthy and aesthetically productive.