Violet Paget, who took the pen name of Vernon Lee, was born to English expatriate parents on 14 October 1856 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. She was recognized in her time as one of the most impressive intellectuals of Victorian England, noted for her wide-ranging interests--from art and music to contemporary political and scientific theory--and for her brilliant, although at times extremely acerbic, conversation. Henry James, who avoided her after being satirized in a thinly disguised portrait in her short story "Lady Tal" (published in Vanitas, 1892), said she was "as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent, which is saying a great deal." She was mentioned, in a favorable comparison with John Ruskin, in Robert Browning's poem "Asolando" (1889), and a list of a few of her correspondents suggests the range of her contacts: Bernard Berenson, Henry and William James, Walter Pater, Sarah Orne Jewett, Aldous Huxley, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and H. G...