Lee adopted her pseudonym from her half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton. Writing from an early age and in multiple languages, her first literary production, Les Aventures d'une Piece de Monnaie, appeared when she was only 13. In 1877, she published Tuscan Peasant Plays in Fraser's Magazine and her career was launched. Living in France, England and Italy, Lee became an adherent of Walter Pater and produced some expert criticism such as Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880). Her essays, such as Belcario (1883), show an imaginative wit and scholarship. In spite of this excellent work, she is best-remembered today for her stories and novels of the supernatural which included A Phantom Lover (1886), Hauntings (1890) and The Legend of Madame Krasinska (1903). Her other works include Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century Idyl (1883), The Countess of Albany (1884), Miss Brown (1884), Vanitas: Polite Stories (1892), Art and Life (1896), Lumbo and Other Essays (1897), The Child in the Vatican (1900), The Enchanted Woods (1905), The Spirit of Rome (1906), Louis Norbert (1914), Proteus; or The Future of Intelligence (1925), The Golden Keys (1925) and Music and Its Lovers (1932).
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