The Sibyl A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies

Edited by Sophie Geoffroy

A tribute to the viola hirta who died on the eve of St Valentine’s Day.

“Literature is the universal confidant, the spiritual director of mankind.”
–Vernon Lee[1]

On the anniversary of her lonely death, let us conjure up her ghost and celebrate
her renaissance.

1. Introduction

‘The Sibyl’ is an academic non-profit online journal, dedicated to the study of Violet Paget/Vernon Lee and her circle, edited by Sophie Geoffroy and published by Steven Halliwell as one of the OSCHOLARS group of journals under the general editorship of D.C. Rose.

Publication is intended to be three times a year. We welcome contributions such as articles, book reviews, reports of events in relation to Vernon Lee (announcements, exhibitions, conferences, calls for papers…). Your experience of ‘teaching Vernon Lee’ is also of interest to us. If you wish to have your book reviewed in ‘The Sibyl’, please contact Sophie Geoffroy (@) or D.C. Rose (@).

2. The Editor

Sophie Geoffroy is Professor at the University of La Réunion (France), where she is also Head of the Department of English Studies, Director of the research center O.R.A.C.L.E. (Observatoire Réunionnais des Arts, des Cultures et des Littératures dans leur Environnement) and President of Niama (Indian Ocean Association for the Development of Gender Studies).

Specialising in nineteenth century studies, her teaching and research areas are: intertextuality, intermediality, intercultural dynamics, and the fantastic (see her Introduction à l’étude des textes fantastiques anglo-américains, Paris, Editions du temps, 2000). She has published critical editions (Hawthorne, by Henry James, Paris: José Corti, 2000), unpublished correspondence (‘Henry James and Family: Eleven Unpublished Letters’, Sources, Spring 2003) and books and articles on Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vernon Lee (La voix maudite, Terre de Brume, 2001), Angela Carter, Jane Campion (rewriting Henry James), or even Enki Bilal’s comic books into film.

She has contributed numerous entries in the forthcoming Dictionnaire des Littératures de l’Imaginaire (Jacques Goimard and Stéphane Manfrédo eds., Rennes: L’Atalante, 2009) (Vernon Lee, Angela Carter, voice, underground, disappearance, space, time, Beauty and the Beast and its rewritings, The Erlking and his avatars, children, musicians, artists, dolls, animated statues, automata, puppets, fairies, intertextuality, alchemy, hermeticism, the kabbala, illusions, magnetism, haunted houses and hauntings, curses and prayers, miracles, Satanism, the Tradition, hair, translation…). She is also a translator and is currently preparing a critical edition and a translation into French of Sir Walter Besant’s Bourbon Journal (Aug. 1863).

3. Issues

Issue 1 : Spring 2007

Issue 2 : Summer 2007

Issue 3: Winter 2007/8

Issue 4: Winter 2008/9

Appendix : Bibliography of Works by and Relating to Vernon Lee

4. Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to Celia Gautier for proof-reading the first issue during Cyclone Gamède among other turbulence.

I am extremely grateful to Patricia Burdick, the Special Collections Librarian at the Miller Library (Colby College), for her help and permission to publish ‘The Doll’ online.

I also wish to thank The Rose Garden for entrusting me with the task of this journal; and to our expectant readers, who were kept waiting for this to come forth.

My warmest thanks to David C. Rose without whose enthusiasm and unfailing support the present undertaking would have remained the mere shadow of a dream.

And my ultimate thanks to the ultimate reader, whose insightful and challenging curiosity and understanding helped me pull my raw material out of the quagmire of the unstable zones into which it had begun to sink.

5. The Discussion Forum

Readers of ‘The Sibyl’ may participate in the discussion forum, set up for all readers of the oscholars group of journals, by clicking its icon. There is a short registration procedure, as with all such groups. This forum also serves for posting notices of events that occur between issues of the journals and the addition of new material at www.oscholars.com.

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