Dear Vernon Lee readers, cher-e-s lecteurs-lectrices,

This week, two more Vernon Lee references found around the world, thanks to our kind readers.

1. Who said that Vernon Lee had no readers across the Atlantic? Please enjoy Sadie Stein‘s article in The Paris Review. Qui a dit que personne ne connaît Vernon Lee en dehors de l’Europe? Un article de Sadie Stein à découvrir dans la Paris Review de New York, en date du 25 novembre 2014.

Extract/ Extrait:

“Vernon Lee—the pen name of the English writer Violet Paget—was a travel writer, novelist, musician, and critic with a strong interest in aesthetics. One of the first to bring the concept of Einfühlung, or empathy, into English criticism, she was also an outspoken follower of Walter Pater’s aestheticism. “An engaged feminist, she always dressed à la garçonne,” someone has written, amazingly, on Wikipedia.

Lee’s work is included in any collection of Victorian ghost stories. Her work is haunting in the true sense and not merely because it deals so frequently with possession. Her stories are graceful, engaging, surprisingly strange. There are often lesbian subtexts; the supernatural was a vehicle for a writer like Lee to indirectly explore such themes.”

“Limbo”, by Sadie Stein, The Paris Review, 25 nov. 2014.

The full article can be accessed here/pour l’article complet, voir ici:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/11/25/limbo/

 Many thanks to David C. Rose and The Oscholars for sending the information to me!

Merci à David C. Rose et The Oscholars pour cette information!

2. And as a present, please enjoy the following anecdote, from John Fothergill’s Innkeeper’s Diary, kindly offered to our readers by Shafquat Towheed./ Et en prime, ce petit bijou offert par Shafquat Towheed à nos lecteurs: une anecdote savoureuse extraite du Journal d’un aubergiste de John Fothergill.

“Dear old Miss Paget, ‘Vernon Lee’, was brought here by Miss Price. Over 70, but with still a male stride and a downright manner, one more of the last remaining promontories of the ‘nineties to come here. I showed her the rock garden and said, ‘Don’t you think that’s a good design?’ — ‘I don’t like rock gardens, so I don’t mind how they are designed’.”

“Un jour, Miss Price nous amena cette chère vieille Miss Paget, ‘Vernon Lee’. Elle avait alors plus de 70 ans, mais toujours sa démarche si masculine et cette façon très directe de s’exprimer; c’était l’une des dernières sommités des années 90 à venir nous rendre visite. Je lui montrai le jardin de rocaille en lui demandant: “n’est-il est pas admirablement conçu?”– “Je n’aime pas les jardins de rocaille, alors peu m’importe comment ils sont conçus.”

John Fothergill, An Inkeeper’s Diary, p. 177-78.

Grateful greetings to Shafquat for this anecdote! Merci mille fois à Shafquat pour cette anecdote!

Sophie Geoffroy