L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron" by Lucasta Miller

 

Summary (from the publisher): A lost nineteenth-century literary life, brilliantly rediscovered--Letitia Elizabeth Landon, hailed as the female Byron; she changed English poetry; her novels, short stories, and criticism, like Byron though in a woman's voice, explored the dark side of sexuality.

"None among us dares to say / What none will choose to hear"--L.E.L., "Lines of Life"
Letitita Elizabeth Landon--pen name L.E.L.--dared to say it and made sure she was heard.
Hers was a life lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London's 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron's came to an end.

Lucasta Miller tells the full story and re-creates the literary London of her time. She was born in 1802 and was shaped by the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a time of conservatism when values were in flux. She began publishing poetry in her teens and came to be known as a daring poet of thwarted romantic love. We see L.E.L. as an emblematic figure who embodied a seismic cultural shift, the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. Miller writes of Jane Eyre as the direct connection to L.E.L.--its first-person confessional voice, its Gothic extremes, its love triangle, and in its emphasis on sadomasochistic romantic passion.

Review: Largely obscured and forgotten since her death, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who styled herself L.E.L. on her written work, was a celebrated and scandalous literary figure in London in the early 1820s. She came onto the scene as a teenager and her poetry, novels, short stories, and literary criticism had a profound influence on the London literary scene. But her choice to write in the first person while writing about sexual themes, combined with the swirling rumors around her literary champion Jerdan, led her to being ostracized. In fact, it was a commonly discussed secret that she had three children with the married Jerdan. 

Miller does an excellent job of meticulously researching L.E.L. and incorporates detailed analysis of her written works and relates them back to what was happening in her personal life at the time. Because I have not read any of her works, at time it felt above my head and a bit too abstract for me, but I do acknowledge that incorporating a writer's work into her biography is critical. 

In the years before her death, Letitia's literary reputation had waned and the scandal surrounding her at harmed her social outlook as well. After one engagement failed when her intended learned about her scandalous past, she married the Governor of Cape Coast Castle in West Africa. He was far enough removed from London that he likely did not know about all the rumors surrounding her but he also had scandal surrounding himself in regard to the slave trade. 

Just weeks after her marriage, Letitia was found dead in her dressing room. The author does a particularly good job of analyzing the ambiguous nature of her death, which could have been suicide or accidental in nature. The author likens this back to her writing and public persona, which was itself largely ambiguous and smoke and mirrors in nature. I appreciated how the author structures the book, opening it with the scene of her death and the obscuring of her name within the literary world and then working backwards to tell her life story. 

This was an interesting insight into the fickle nature of fame and posterity. Letitia, by all rights, should be read and remembered by many today, if her connections, influence on other writers, and popularity during her lifetime are any judge. But she is largely forgotten and unknown. I appreciated the author's efforts to bring her memory to light.

Stars: 4