LEE, VERNON, the pen-name of Violet Paget (1856-), English author, was born in France of English parentage Oct. 14 1856, and made her home at Maiano, near Florence, identifying herself with her adopted country and making special study of its art and history. Amongst her publications are Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880) and many volumes of essays; certain novels and stories, such as Miss Brown (1884); A Phantom Lover (1886); Hauntings (1890); Vanitas (1892); Sister Benvenuta (1906) and Louis Norbert (1914); a play in verse, Ariadne in Mantua (1903), and Satan the Waster, a philosophic trilogy (1920), as well as a volume of political essays, Gospels of Anarchy (1908).
Her half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907), who was also born in France Jan. 6 1845, was educated in France and Germany and at Oriel College, Oxford, afterwards entering the diplomatic service. He married in 1898 Annie E. Holdsworth, author of Joanna Traill, Spinster; The Years that the Locust Hath Eaten, and other novels. He published a number of volumes of poetry, as well as a translation of Dante's Inferno, and (with his wife) Forest Notes (1899). He died at Florence Sept. 7 1907.