Published in 1881, Vernon Lee’s Belcaro: Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions continued her engagement with aesthetic questions through the essay form. Dedicated to poet A. Mary F. Robinson and written early in their passionate (likely lesbian) friendship, Lee describes the collection as a “scholar’s copy book” (5). Accordingly, Lee seeks not to set out “a system” of “art-philosophy” (8) but commits to the view that “the complete and systematic is worthless and even dangerous, for it is false; the irrelevant, the contradictory, is precious, because it is true to our better part” (225).
The form of Belcaro echoes Lee’s commitment to the fragmentary (several of the 10 essays had previously been published individually in periodicals) and contradictory (the introduction highlights how the two essays about music—“Cherubino: A Psychological Art Fancy” (129-155) and “Chapelmaster Kreisler: A Study of Musical Romanticists” (106-128)—contradict each...
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Citation: Gracia, Dominique. "Belcaro, Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33566, accessed 14 December 2025.]
