Genius Loci: Notes on Places

By Vernon Lee

It had rained heavily, that last day at Verona, and cleared up in the afternoon. I bought a bunch of lavender for remembrance; and had some coffee, before starting, in Piazza dei Signori. The stones were still wet, but the sky clear. Moist clouds were sailing above the towers; the town pigeons pecking on the pavement and flying into the palace crannies; swallows screaming; the sun, invisible behind roofs, was setting. 'Tis at this hour, to the sound of bells, that the genius of old cities seems to gather himself up and overcome ones heart.

To certain among us, undeniably, places, localities (I can find no reverent and tender enough expression for them in our practical, personal language) become objects of intense and most intimate feeling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Release date: Nov 6, 2017

Vernon Lee

Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of Violet Paget, a British author of supernatural fiction. Born in France to British expatriate parents, Paget spent most of her life in continental Europe. A committed feminist and pacifist, she joined the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War to express her opposition to British militarism. A lesbian, Paget had relationships with Mary Robinson, Amy Levy, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson throughout her life. Paget, a dedicated follower of Walter Pater’s Aesthetic movement, lived for many years in Florence, where she gained a reputation as a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to her work in art history, Paget was a leading writer of short fiction featuring supernatural figures and themes. Among her best known works are Hauntings (1890), a collection of four chilling tales, and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” a story which appeared in an 1895 issue of The Yellow Book, a controversial periodical that featured the works of Aubrey Beardsley, George Gissing, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. Although Paget was largely forgotten by the mid-twentieth century, feminist scholars have rekindled attention in her pioneering work as a leading proponent of Aestheticism.