"There is no doubt that Vernon Lee will be read by her posterity," predicted Desmond MacCarthy in 1931, "for her work is a rare combination of intellectual curiosity and imaginative sensibility." MacCarthy expressed the views of many of Vernon Lee's contemporaries, who recognized what Henry James called "her vigour and sweep of intellect" and who applauded her scholarly studies of eighteenth-century Italy and the Renaissance, her evocative sketches of places she loved, and her shrewd essays on stylistics and aesthetics. Like many authors of her era, she ventured into several genres: in addition to essays, she wrote historical and fantastic fiction, a play, a puppet show, and a hybrid work she called a "philosophic war trilogy." Yet the woman Walter Pater expected to stand "among the very few best critical writers of all time" receded into something of an intellectual curiosity after her death in 1935 and is today remembered...