Series: Victorian Literature and Culture Series
Hardcover: 404 pages
Publisher: University of Virginia Press (April 29, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0813921589
ISBN-13: 978-0813921587
Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.4 x 9.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Best Sellers Rank: #2,247,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #284 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Victorian #1093 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > History #4607 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Europe > Great Britain
Vineta Colby's scholarship is relaxed and assured. Page after page of this book presents information that will be new even to those who thought they knew all about the mysterious "Vernon Lee," the pen name-slash-alter ego of the British heiress Violet Paget, who preferred Italy to her own nation and writing to either. The women who Lee loved are also an interesting gallery, and her brother, the aesthete Eugene, who travelled flat on his back with a male attendant to take care of him, is a whole different trip, deserving of a book of his own.All in all, a terrific biography. I deduct one star only because, skilled as she is as a writer, she cannot manage to make Vernon Lee's individual writings even a fraction as interesting as she says they are. This is a problem Michael Holroyd faced with his magisterial biography of Lytton Strachey, like Vernon Lee a decidedly minor talent, but Holroyd managed to surmount the inherent problems and delivered a convincing defense of Strachey's writing in various categories, but this Colby cannot do. The reasons for this are both manifold and obvious, but a splendid try.
Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography (Victorian Literature and Culture Series) The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England (Victorian Literature and Culture Series) LEE CHILD: SERIES READING ORDER: MY READING CHECKLIST: JACK REACHER SERIES, JACK REACHER SHORT STORIES, HAROLD MIDDLETON SERIES, SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS BY LEE CHILD, LEE CHILD ANTHOLOGIES The Lee-Enfield: A Century of Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield Rifled and Carbines Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature Twentieth-Century Victorian: Arthur Conan Doyle and the 'Strand Magazine', 1899-1930 (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture) The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings (Victorian Literature and Culture Series) Beowulf (Broadview Literary Texts) (Broadview Literary Texts Series) Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture) Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies (Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies) Vernon's Collectors' Guide to Orders, Medals and Decorations (With Valuations) The Upanishads: A New Translation by Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes (Tarcher Cornerstone Editions) Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents: Who They Are, What They Want, How to Win Them Over (Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents) George Washingtons Mount Vernon Diary of a Disgruntled Man (Vernon Coleman's Diaries Book 1) Directory of Literary Magazines 2001 (Clmp Directory of Literary Magazines and Presses) The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Penguin Dictionary) Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers (The I.B.Tauris Literary Guides for Travellers) Literary Market Place 2015: The Directory of the American Book Publishing Industry with Industry Indexes (Literary Market Place (Lmp)) Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History (Victorian Life and Times)