Violet Paget spoke four languages, began her career as a journalist at the age of 13, suffered from maladies that were probably psychosomatic, and may have secretly been a lesbian. She was, in other words, the perfect Victorian lady writer of gothic horror, a mystery and a scandal in her own right.

Though not well remembered today, Paget's work-often likened to the works of Henry James (whom she admired, and even dedicated a novel to)-is worth seeking out for lovers of the genre. Her ghost stories are, by turns, hauntingly ambiguous tales about love conflated with mental illness, femme fatales, confused sexuality, and women sacrificed on the altar of marriage.

This 1890 collection, considered by some her finest, includes the tales:

• "Amour: Dure: Passages from the Diary of Spiridion Trepka"
• "Oke of Okehurst"
• "A Wicked Voice"

"Vernon Lee" was the pseudonym of British writer VIOLET PAGET (1865-1935), who wrote numerous novels, essays, travelogues, and works of literary criticism.