Hunt's father was the artist Alfred William Hunt, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite group, and Violet was brought up in the Rossetti circle, which included John Ruskin, William Morris and the Rossettis. It was only natural that she would study art in London. She became renowned as a society hostess. Her salons attracted the cream of literary society, including Joseph Conrad, Rebecca West, Henry James and Wyndham Lewis to name a few. In 1894, she published her first work, The Maiden's Progress, a novel of feminism. She became very active in the Suffrage movement and helped to found the Women Writers' Suffrage League in 1908. She encouraged D. H. Lawrence and became a close friend and lover of H.G. Wells and later Ford Maddox Ford. Hunt became the model for many characters such as Maugham's Rose Waterfield in The Moon and Sixpence. Her own literary output was considerable and includes The Way of Marriage (1896), Affairs of the Heart (1900), The Celebrity At Home (1904), The Cat (1905), Tales of the Uneasy (1911), The Celebrity's Daughter (1913), Their Lives (1916), Their Hearts (1921), More Tales of the Uneasy (1925), The Flurried Years (1926) and The Wife of Rossetti - Her Life and Death (1932). |
