Vernon Lee eBooks

The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Esthetics. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Vernon Lee   -  Vernon Lee, 2017  - 

I have tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference, particularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science. But my explanation is addressed to readers in whom I have no right to expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its more modern developments. I have therefore based my explanation of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader.

L'avventura di Winthrop. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Vernon Lee   -  Alphaville Edizioni Digitali, 2014  - 

Ammaliato da una strana fascinazione per il ritratto di un cantante del Settecento, in una calda estate di fine Ottocento un giovane pittore americano vive in una città della pianura padana un’avventura onirica in una villa abbandonata di campagna. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1881, "L’avventura di Winthrop" è certamente uno dei racconti di fantasmi più celebri di Vernon Lee (1856-1935), e trae origine da un avvenimento autobiografico nella vita della scrittrice – l’impressione suscitata, durante una visita all’Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna nel 1873, dal ritratto del grande cantante lirico del XVIII secolo Carlo Broschi, detto Farinelli.

Gospels of Anarchy, and Other Contemporary Studies. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Vernon Lee   -  Goglib, 2020  - 

In 1909 Vernon Lee published in a volume, whose title was Gospels of Anarchy, some essays she had written between the end of the century and 1907. The book doesn’t speak at all of anarchy in the sense one would expect: there is no mention of Bakunin, nor of any other theoretical or practical anarchist. It speaks of nineteenth-century culture under a double facies: it hints at the obvious one of the spirit of gross scientism, and focuses all attention on the less obvious one of the post-romantic and unrealistic restorations of spirituality that carry within themselves a kinship with positivism as well as the key of their failure, which are both revealed in the persistent intellectualism that imprints all forms of alleged religiosity, rediscovered or founded from scratch: this judgment falls mercilessly on Emerson, Tolstoy, Ruskin, Nietzsche, William James with his “will to believe”, and finally on what seems to Vernon Lee the latest version of this spirit, the planning attitude of the future of the new socialist Utopias, targeted through H.G. Wells, which “think about the future” instead of “taking care of the present”, that is to say they plan the future with abstract thought and unrealistic velleities rather than accepting what could be prepared by taking thoughtful care of the present. This is the meaning of the Anarchy label: the obtuseness of the nineteenth century, which by claiming to restore the mythical spirituality which it longs for through the artifice dominated by the intellect, falls into “disorder”. In the meantime, in the variety of critical discussions, Vernon Lee’s philosophy is built piece by piece, in an unsystematic way, which could be summarized with caution as a religion of respect for the infinite variety of Reality, and respect for the humble and useful work that takes care of the present and its needs. A philosophy resistant to formulas and built on an original notion of Manifold Reality and its needs.