Hauntings (1890) is a short story collection by Vernon Lee. Published at the height of her career as a leading proponent of Aestheticism and scholar of the Italian Renaissance, Hauntings collects four of her most chilling tales of the supernatural. Employing formal techniques to mimic diary and letter writing, Lee brings her reader face to face with the psychological unease embodied in her characters. A principled feminist and committed pacifist, Lee was virtually blacklisted by critics and publishers following her opposition to the First World War. Through the efforts of dedicated scholars, however, interest in her works has increased over the past several decades, granting her the readership she deserves as a master of literary horror. “They are things of the imagination, born there, bred there, sprung from the strange confused heaps, half-rubbish, half-treasure, which lie in our fancy, heaps of half-faded recollections, of fragmentary vivid impressions, litter of multi-colored tatters, and faded herbs and flowers, whence arises that odor (we all know it), musty and damp, but penetratingly sweet and intoxicatingly heady, which hangs in the air when the ghost has swept through the unopened door, and the flickering flames of candle and fire start up once more after waning.” Vernon Lee’s world is one where ghosts and humans walk together, often without taking notice of one another. In those instances when they do, however, strange and terrible things are likely to occur. The stories in this collection record such fateful encounters: a German academic becomes obsessed with a lady of the Italian Renaissance; a young girl is discovered alone on the Italian coast following a brutal storm; a painter grows uneasy at the resemblance of a subject to one of her distant ancestors; and a composer hears the voice of a famous castrato dead for centuries. Hauntings is a masterful work from the mind of Vernon Lee, one of history’s most terrifying storytellers. This edition of Vernon Lee’s Hauntings is a classic work of supernatural fiction reimagined for modern readers.
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Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of Violet Paget, a British author of supernatural fiction. Born in France to British expatriate parents, Paget spent most of her life in continental Europe. A committed feminist and pacifist, she joined the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War to express her opposition to British militarism. A lesbian, Paget had relationships with Mary Robinson, Amy Levy, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson throughout her life. Paget, a dedicated follower of Walter Pater’s Aesthetic movement, lived for many years in Florence, where she gained a reputation as a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to her work in art history, Paget was a leading writer of short fiction featuring supernatural figures and themes. Among her best known works are Hauntings (1890), a collection of four chilling tales, and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady, ” a story which appeared in an 1895 issue of The Yellow Book, a controversial periodical that featured the works of Aubrey Beardsley, George Gissing, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. Although Paget was largely forgotten by the mid-twentieth century, feminist scholars have rekindled attention in her pioneering work as a leading proponent of Aestheticism.
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