{"title":"Books by Vernon Lee","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780198837541","title":"The Virgin of the Seven Daggers","description":"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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56226879504757,"sku":"9780198837541","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780198837541_8c08b148-57b7-4975-8a46-d98a71539f08.jpg?v=1786012175"},{"product_id":"9781941701782","title":"The Psychology of an Art Writer","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn openly lesbian, feminist writer, Vernon Lee—a pseudonym of Violet Paget—is the most important female aesthetician to come out of nineteenth century England.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough she was widely known for her supernatural fictions, Lee hasn’t gained the recognition she so clearly deserves for her contributions in the fields of aesthetics, philosophy of empathy, and art criticism. An early follower of Walter Pater, her work is characterized by extreme attention to her own responses to artworks, and a level of psychological sensitivity rarely seen in any aesthetic writing. Today, she is largely overlooked in curriculums, her aesthetic works long out of print. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDavid Zwirner Books is reintroducing Lee’s writing through the first-ever English publication of \"Psychology of an Art Writer\" (1903) along with selections from her groundbreaking \"Gallery Diaries\" (1901–1904), breathtaking accounts of Lee’s own experiences with the great paintings and sculptures she traveled to see. Ranging from deeply felt assessments of the way mood affects our ability to appreciate art, to detailed descriptions of some of the most powerful personal experiences with artworks, these writings provide profound insights into the fields of psychology and aesthetics. Her philosophical inquiries in \u003ci\u003eThe Psychology of an Art Writer \u003c\/i\u003eleave no stone unturned, combining fine-grained ekphrases with high fancy and dense abstraction. The diaries, in turn, establish Lee as one of the most sensitive writers about art in any language.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWith a foreword by Berkeley classicist Dylan Kenny, which guides the reader through these writings and contextualizes these texts within Lee’s other work, this is the quintessential introduction to her astonishing and complex oeuvre.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309104345461,"sku":"9781941701782","price":10.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781941701782_23076317-7249-45a1-968b-90c165e80e0b.jpg?v=1786031002"},{"product_id":"9781961884663","title":"Hauntings","description":"\u003cb\u003eBewitching ghost stories from seminal short story writer Vernon Lee. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e“My ghosts are what you call spurious ghosts, of whom I can affirm only one thing, that they haunted certain brains, and have haunted, among others, my own…”\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShipwrecked before a remote Italian coastal village, a young girl discovers the ability to command love and incite madness; a Polish historian is drawn to the enigmatic allure of a medieval Duchess with a deadly past; a painter, hired to capture the likeness of a reclusive couple, slowly uncovers a mysterious love affair; and a man with a voice that is as deadly as it is beautiful eats away at the health of those who hear him sing, troubling a composer years later. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnce described by Henry James as being “as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent,” Vernon Lee’s ghost stories haunt as much as they reveal an obsession with art, architecture, and deadly, queer desires. Even the smallest vibration from the past signals danger for the characters in \u003ci\u003eHauntings\u003c\/i\u003e: from the emanations of old houses and old books to the discovery of old portraits, objects come alive and worm into the minds of the living.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369444225397,"sku":"9781961884663","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781961884663_40d07c4f-3942-48d9-9f96-62f35ed5793e.jpg?v=1786030465"},{"product_id":"a-phantom-lover","title":"A Phantom Lover","description":"\u003cp\u003eA tale of two Alices, in this decadent Gothic tale the young Alice Oke finds herself captivated by the tale of her namesake seventeenth-​century ancestor, who was involved in a scandalous affair. Surrounded by portraits and relics, as time goes on she seems more and more consumed by the tale, and those around her start to worry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA beautifully crafted novella that upends the Gothic genre, this is a tale of portraits and mirrors – views snatched through reflections in other faces – and the full extent of the haunting is left to the reader to decide. Decades ahead of its time, this psychological tale of obsession by one of the highest-regarded supernatural writers of all time is ripe for rediscovery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57629228073333,"sku":"9781804472095","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804472095.jpg?v=1791213532"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-vernon-lee.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}