Hunt was born in
Durham. Her father was the artist
Alfred William Hunt, her mother the novelist and translator
Margaret Raine Hunt. The family moved to London in 1865 and she was brought up in the
Pre-Raphaelite group, knowing
John Ruskin and
William Morris. There is a story that
Oscar Wilde, a friend and correspondent, proposed to her in
Dublin in 1879; the significance of this event requires her to have been old enough to become engaged, leading to change her birth date to 1862 (not 1866 as often given). Hunt's writings encompassed short stories, novels, memoir, and biography. She was an active feminist, and her novels ''The Maiden's Progress
and A Hard Woman
were works of the New Woman genre, while her short story collection Tales of the Uneasy
is an example of supernatural fiction. Her novel White Rose of Weary Leaf'' is regarded as her best work, while her biography of
Elizabeth Siddal is considered unreliable, with animus against Siddal's husband,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She was active in writers' organisations, founding the
Women Writers' Suffrage League in 1908 and participated in the founding of
International PEN in 1921. Despite her considerable literary output, Hunt's reputation rests more with the
literary salons she held at her home, South Lodge, in
Campden Hill. Among her guests were
Rebecca West,
Ezra Pound,
Joseph Conrad,
Wyndham Lewis,
D. H. Lawrence, and
Henry James. She helped
Ford Madox Hueffer (later known as Ford Madox Ford) establish
The English Review in 1908. Many of these people were subsequently characterised in her novels, most notably
Their Lives and
Their Hearts. She was fictionalised by Ford Maddox Ford in two novels: as the scheming Florence Dowell in
The Good Soldier and as the promiscuous Sylvia Tietjens in his tetralogy ''
Parade's End''. She was also the inspiration for the character Rose Waterfield in Somerset Maugham's novel
The Moon and Sixpence and Norah Nesbit in
Of Human Bondage. Hunt wrote two collections of supernatural stories,
Tales of the Uneasy and
More Tales of the Uneasy.
Tales of the Uneasy was described by
E. F. Bleiler as containing "Excellent stories, in which the supernatural is used as a technical device to indicate ironies of fate and the intimate relationship of life and death."
Tales of the Uneasy was listed by horror historian R. S. Hadji among "unjustly neglected" horror books. Violet Hunt died of
pneumonia in her home in 1942. Her grave and those of her parents is at
Brookwood Cemetery. ==Works==