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3 unusual facts about Vernon Lee


Vernon Lee

In Florence she knit lasting friendships with the painter Telemaco Signorini and the learned Mario Praz, and she encouraged his love of learning and English literature.

An engaged feminist, she always dressed à la garçonne, and was a member of the Union of Democratic Control.

She developed her own theory of psychological aesthetics in collaboration with her lover, Kit Anstruther-Thomson, based on previous works by William James, Theodor Lipps, and Karl Groos.


Jane Morris

Later in life, she had no trouble moving in upper class circles and appears to have been the model for the heroine in the 1884 novel Miss Brown by Vernon Lee upon which was based Mrs Higgins in Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (1914) and the later film My Fair Lady.

Written Lives

There is also, towards the end of the book, a section entitled 'Fugitive Women', which includes shorter sketches of Emily Brontë, Julie de Lespinasse, Violet Hunt, Vernon Lee, Adah Isaacs Menken and Lady Hester Stanhope.


see also