Vernon Lee was a well-known English, especially for her supernatural fiction. Her real name was Violet Paget. This book is a departure from her usual genres, though she did write many non-fiction works on art and music. This book is a psychological look at what beauty means.

This 1913 volume explores the philosophical significance of the concepts of beauty and aesthetic preference.

"The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics" by Vernon Lee is a groundbreaking exploration into the world of aesthetics and the psychology at the back of our perceptions of beauty. Published in the past due nineteenth century, Lee, a pseudonym for British creator and artwork critic Violet Paget, brings a completely unique mixture of philosophy, psychology, and art criticism to dissect the elaborate nature of beauty. The book delves into the subjective and often elusive concept of splendor, attempting to get to the bottom of the psychological processes that influence our aesthetic judgments. Lee demanding situations conventional aesthetic theories and proposes an extra nuanced knowledge that considers person differences and emotional responses to art and splendor. Drawing on insights from psychology, Lee examines the impact of feelings, cultural influences, and personal studies on our notion of beauty. The paintings stands as a pioneering attempt to bridge the gap among aesthetics and psychology, laying the foundation for next explorations into the intersection of artwork and the human thoughts. Lee's prose is each erudite and available, making "The Beautiful" a treasured useful resource for pupils and lovers alike.

In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.

Evolutionary aesthetics is the attempt to understand the aesthetic judgement of human beings and their spontaneous distinction between "beauty" and "ugliness" as a biologically adapted ability to make important decisions in life. The hypothesis is - both in the area of "natural beauty" and in sexuality, with regard to landscape preferences, but also in the area of "artificial beauty" (i.e. in art and design) - that beauty opens up fitness opportunities, while ugliness holds fitness risks. In this book, this adaptive view of aesthetics is developed theoretically, presented on the basis of numerous examples, and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology are illuminated.

Originally published in 1962, the experimental study of aesthetics was a field particularly associated with the name of C.W. Valentine, who in this book provided a critical review of research carried out since the end of the nineteenth century principally by British and American psychologists. The investigations described, many of them conducted by the author, are concerned with individual responses to what is commonly regarded as beautiful in painting, music, and poetry, an important distinction being made between the perception of objects as ‘beautiful’ as opposed to ‘pleasing’. The reactions of children and adults, and of people having different ethnic and social backgrounds, are explored in a variety of experiments dealing with specific elements, including colour, form, and balance in painting; musical intervals, discord, harmony, melody, and tempo; and rhythm, metre, imagery, and associations in classical and romantic poetry. Other experiments seek to disclose the temperamental and attitudinal factors underlying individual differences in the judgement and appreciation of specific works of art. Of particular interest are the studies of responses to modern paintings, poems and musical compositions. The findings throw light on the development of discrimination and taste and suggest the possibility of some common factor in the appreciation of these three arts. It was felt that critics as well as psychologists and aestheticians would find much to encourage reflection and to stimulate further research.