Hermione Lee

Dame Hermione Lee (born 29 February 1948) is a English biographer, literary critic, journalist, editor, television presenter, and academic. She was elected in 1992 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2001 a Fellow of the British Academy. Her biography of Virginia Woolf (1996, Chatto & Windus) won the 1997 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, and her biography of Penelope Fitzgerald (2013, Chatto & Windus) won the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She was appointed in 2003 Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), in 2013 Dame Commander (DBE), and in 2023 Dame Grand Cross (GBE).

Quotes

There is a tiny pause, right at the start of the film The Hours that caught at my heart, but I didn't think anyone else would notice it. It took me back to the work I did on my biography of Virginia Woolf. There were two documents in her archives that I found particularly distressing. One was the little soft-covered notebook she used for her diary for 1941. I knew there wouldn't be any entries after March 28, the day she killed herself, but I couldn't help turning the blank pages that followed, unable to believe that the voice I had been living with for the past five years had stopped speaking. The other was her suicide note. (One of the suicide notes, in fact. She wrote three — two versions for her husband, Leonard, and one for her sister Vanessa — unable to stop revising her work until the end.)
- (8 February 2003) "Is moody, suicidal Virginia Woolf too complicated for cinema? Hermione Lee, her biographer, finds out". The Guardian.

Of the many metaphors for biography, two make useful starting points. One — a disturbing image — is the autopsy, the forensic examination of the dead body which takes place when the cause of death is unusual, suspicious, or ambiguous. ...
There is something gruesome about this metaphor. It is used when commentators on biography want to emphasize its ghoulish or predatory aspects. ...
A contrasting metaphor for biography is the portrait. Whereas autopsy suggests clinical investigation and, even, violation, portrait suggests empathy, bringing to life, capturing the character. The portraitist simulates warmth, energy, idiosyncrasy, and personality through attention to detail and skill in representation.
- Biography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2009. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9780199533541. (170 pages)

When I was very young, I think I was aware that I was reading different kinds of books, which slightly took my teachers aback. I can remember boastfully telling my teacher, when I was about 10, that I was reading Jude the Obscure. She clearly thought this was a bad idea. But I was a slightly odd, inward child. At home – we didn’t have television – I was reading, reading all the time.
- as quoted by James Rivington in: (Summer 2017) "Hermione Lee: interview". British Academy Review (No. 30).

Emotions about our lost houses and gardens have to do with growing old and acquiring guilt: we are always leaving our first home and lamentingly looking back to it. The whole point of the Garden of Eden is that we are going to leave it, and then spend the rest of our time wishing we could return to it.
- "Chapter 3. A House of Air by Hermione Lee". Lives of Houses. 2020. pp. 30–43. ISBN 9780691193663. (304 pages; quote from p. 32; edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee)