Although Vernon Lee (born Violet Paget) was widely respected for her intellect during her lifetime-- Henry James, for example, wrote to his brother William on 20 January 1893 that Lee's "vigour and sweep of intellect are most rare and her talk superior altogether"--her literary reputation peaked early in her life and gradually diminished. Like many of her contemporaries, she wrote in several genres; besides her five volumes of short stories, she published novels, collections of travel essays, romances, philosophy, and psychological and aesthetic explorations of the arts. Like other female Victorian writers, she believed that few people would take a woman author seriously, especially in the field of aesthetics, and thus created the pseudonym "Vernon Lee," which she used both professionally and personally.

While her short fiction has been reprinted in several editions since her death in 1935, her stories have never been widely popular. Her biographer, Peter Gunn, praises...