Vernon Lee--a pseudonym of Violet Paget (1856-1935)--is the most important female aesthetician to come out of 19th-century England. Though she was widely known for her supernatural fictions, Lee never gained the recognition she so clearly deserved for her contributions in the fields of aesthetics, philosophy of empathy and art criticism. An early follower of Walter Pater, she wrote with an extreme attention to her own responses to artworks, and a level of psychological sensitivity rarely seen in any aesthetic writing. Today, she is largely understudied and rarely read, her aesthetic writings long out of print.

Now, David Zwirner Books reintroduces her writing through the first-ever English publication of The Psychology of an Art Writer (1903) along with selections from her groundbreaking Gallery Diaries (1901-4), breathtaking accounts of Lee's own experiences with the great paintings and sculptures she traveled to see. Ranging from assessments of the way mood affects our ability to appreciate art to descriptions of powerful personal experiences with artworks, these writings provide profound insights into the fields of psychology and aesthetics.