L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Mysterious Death of the "Female Byron"

by Lucasta Miller

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--by the acclaimed author of The Brontë Myth ("wonderfully entertaining . . . spellbinding"--New York Times Book Review; "ingenious"--The New Yorker).

"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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Poetry, Feminism, Literature

416 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 5, 2019

Reviews

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was a flaming torch of the London literary scene during 1820-30s. L.E.L, as she marketed herself, modeled herself off of Bryon and Shelley. Writing poetry in the first person, tortured and dramatically Romantic. Her choice of first person point of view placed her in a precarious position as her work discussed amorous endeavors, alluding in the coded language of the time to sexual congress and the emotional consequences. She was playing smoke and mirrors, but her reputation was on the line, which in an increasingly moralistic society as Queen Victoria rose to the throne was a real threat. The laissez-faire attitudes of the Regency were being rejected and, though Landon tried to respin L.E.L, she got pulled under.

The double standard of men and women is highlighted here. Predatory publishers featured front and center. Hypocrisy flashes in BIG BOLD NEON. The London literary circle was not large and if you name an author they in some way knew or were affected by the events surrounding Landon. Dickens comes off like the first four letters of his name suggests. Others are mixed: Thackeray, Coleridge, George Sand, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett, the Brontes, Tennyson, and the list goes on.

Frankly, Barrett's posthumous poem written about L.E.L. is on point:

L.E.L.'s Last Question (excerpt)

Hers was the hand that played for many a year
Love's silver phrase for England, ---smooth and well!
Would God, her heart's more inward oracle
In that lone moment, might confirm her dear!
For when her questioned friends in agony
Made passionate response,---"We think of thee"---
Her place was in the dust, too deep to hear.

After all the players' actions, they were covering up the past and their own transgressions. And those motivated by preserving her memory aided them until Landon was washed from history, her work considered too insipid and florid, but without the context so it seemed. Without the scandalous, it seemed like paper dolls.

Miller clearly researched this book, the 50+ pages of Notes highlight that, but it is evident in the familiarity and context given to both the mores and the players in this tale. Miller does an excellent job drawing the lines between people, letters, books, contracts, artwork, and other ephemera.

Authorial identity was a function not of the author alone, but of publishers, critics, typesetters, booksellers, and especially of the readers whose consumer choices could determine whether a writer's voice lived or died. It is perhaps no accident that L.E.L.'s work features so many dead poets: in her awareness of the impact of commercial mass culture on literature, she anticipated the postmodern notion of "the death of the author."

Was Landon a martyr? No. But she had talent, perhaps not to modern taste, and does not warrant this erasure. Landon fills this transitional space of post-Romantic and pre-Victorian, and I do like the liminal explorations.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the week:
Lucasta Miller's account of an infamous female poet in ruthless times, London in the 1820s and '30s, is abridged in five parts by Katrin Williams.

The dubious William Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette, takes on the responsibility of mentoring young Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who starts writing passionate verse for his magazine, signing off as a persona known as LEL.

But publication comes with conditions...

Reader Helena Bonham Carter
Producer Duncan Minshull.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

[Jeanette]

No rating on this one. I got to nearly 50% and that was enough for me. It's dense, analytic writing. Within the strictures of the time period of her life (L.E.L.) it went into myriads of tangents. It certainly is not just a biography or a study of the woman's life. Much more like an across the board literary dissertation. And about poetry itself, primarily during the time between the Romantics and the Victorians, but not at all limited to the core of what the title predisposes you to expect.

It holds some numbers of photograph pages of high quality reproductions etc. There are many 4 and 5 star aspects to women's roles and the economics of the times. And mores to expectations and subterfuge of lifestyles. But within so much other information- I just plain lost interest. Dry, dense with 100 new name drops for every 3 chapters. It's all about feeling and willfulness quotients to emotion too. She sounds too miserable for me to want to know any longer if her death at 36 after 4 months of a new marriage was a murder or suicide. Some how or other, Marilyn Monroe kept coming to mind. Another tragedy without any definitive ending scenario.

Just yesterday 6 different people at one location (most close relatives all living in the same house) in Joliet IL- suffered drug overdoses with 4 of them deceased now- 2 on ventilators. One son about 24 years old crying on the news (his Mom was dead and buyer). Cocaine in a bad "batch" with fentanyl. And a couple hours later - 2 more deaths not even 2 blocks away from that first house. L.E.L.'s was prussic acid habit. Sounds similar- addiction with a bad batch.

This is highly researched and erudite. But it is literary analysis in such depth and width that it was not for me.

[Kit · Rating 5 out of 5]

The big takeaway from this is that William Jerdan is The Literal Worst. He was the Harvey Weinstein of the proto-Victorian era.

[danielle | localgoddesslit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this biography like it was on fire, each page licking my fingertips and threatening to singe my skin. I now know the bright orange of the cover serves as a fair warning, as does the enigmatic stare of Letitia Elizabeth Landon herself; this is a story hungry to be told. And trust me, you will devour it.

Likely, you have never heard of L.E.L., the celebrated "female Byron" who had nineteenth-century literary London salivating over her every written word. Born in 1802 in an era of fluctuating values and reining conservativism, L.E.L. became the scapegoat of a generation, her ineffable genius and haunting life purposefully buried posthumously. While alive, however, L.E.L. published copious amounts of poetry and prose, making her literary debut at only eighteen. She not only altered the course of English poetry but did so in an undeniably feminine voice while exploring the darker sides of human sexuality. Ultimately L.E.L. led a life so scandalous she died in exile in West Africa under mysterious circumstances, her literary legacy too intertwined with her reputation to survive - until this biography.

A satisfyingly thick work of scholarship shining with the spirit of L.E.L., I highly recommend.

[Kathleen Flynn]

This is a fascinating look at a forgotten writer, but also an absorbing picture of London literary culture and English social history more generally in the 1820s and 1830s -- a strange interim between the louche Regency and the buttoned-up, but hypocritical Victorian era.

It's also the most searing indictment of literary misogyny I think I've ever come across. If the sad story of L.E.L. doesn't make you furious on behalf of all women everywhere, you are dead inside. But this exhaustively researched and entertainingly written book never descends to polemics; it doesn't need to. The facts themselves are devastating enough.

Lucasta Miller is my hero. I did not think it was possible to admire her more than I already did after reading The Bronte Myth, but I was wrong.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you, like I, have a taste for books about scandalous women and the Victorian literati, this will be just your thing.

[Sara]

while I assume all biographers indicate this nowadays, I do respect lucasta miller for framing L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "female Byron" primarily around the issue of biographical and generic ambiguity. between L.E.L. the writer and Letitia the person, the Romantic and Victorian literary periods, irony and sincerity, miller imbues all with virtual scare quotes. since I've worked on m. shelley's work during this waning period of the Young Romantics (tm tm tm taylor swift), it was fascinating to see the hallmarks of that period (wild print culture, annuals, cynicism/reactionary instincts) shape L.E.L.'s career as well. my one bone: by reading and delineating this period (20s/30s) as ambiguous/shifting/messy, she did have to almost universally claim that victorian bourgeois repression culture was dominant, which i'm sure many academics/victorianists would dispute. I think it was smart to keep it mostly focused on victorian literary culture, about which it's much more believable to make quasi universal statements.

as (essentially) pop history and a book ostensibly about one figure, I read carefully and somewhat suspiciously as to how miller does close reading, but found her analysis cogent. reviewers who think she's "reading into it too much," I ask: why are you reading this? do I really have to make the argument that close reading requires and rewards effort? instead i'd recommend you direct criticism at the few times she makes claims (not about the texts) that aren't as sound i.e. one notable passage when she claims v. woolf "must have known" about L.E.L's complicated truth. overall for popular history/biography, it was at once eminently readable but also stacked with enough literary analysis for me to trust it.

starting a narrative with a person's death is cliche by now, but because of it i did move through the book with a bittersweet affective sense of predestination. it's also sad to proudly emblazon your heroine as the "female byron" and then show how permanently damaging that very reputation was for her (while real byron just got to fuck off and die in greece).

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She was left on the margins, surrounded by an aura of mystery and occlusion, her work routinely misunderstood."

I picked this book up several months ago in a charity shop where, for whatever reason, they had several brand new copies of it for a fraction of its trade price. For such a good deal, and such an intriguing premise, I simply couldn't resist — I do love a good tell-all literary biography.

I myself had never heard of L.E.L. but I was very much ready to learn, and Lucasta Miller had plenty of research to share. Seriously, her efforts here were exhaustive — where the trail often ran cold with L.E.L., she would often find some other figure or trivia to fill in the gaps. Thus, you get a very comprehensive picture of the London literary scenes from the 1820s through to the early Victorians. Miller often indulged in asides connecting the literary dots between famous people; somehow during this time, almost everyone in London was only a few degrees from Dickens. I found this a fun part of the reading experience, particularly if your knowledge of nineteenth-century English literature is up to speed, but there were times where it seemed to get in the way of her analysis, particularly in the last chapter when she seemed to only want to talk about Charlotte Brontë.

One thing that really bothered me about Miller's analysis was that she was usually all too keen to make assumptions and draw conclusions about the emotional states and motivations of those whose lives she analyzes. If my English degree has taught me anything, it's that we don't try to read an author too much into their text, but Miller did that almost constantly here, and not just with L.E.L.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this. It was a book, somehow seemingly rare these days, that made me excited to sit down with it to find out just where the story was going to go next. Miller really structures this beautifully — she gives away the ending from the very first page, but leaves the reader constantly guessing as to what exactly got Letitia Landon to that point. Like I said before, this book is well-researched but doesn't skimp on the scandal and thus the fun; it's a perfect pick-me-up for an English literature scholar like myself, something that draws on your knowledge and appreciation for the time period but without bearing down academically.

[V. Briceland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet known as L.E.L., who flourished and disappeared in the 1820s and 1830s, was a genuine cultural phenomenon who has been all but forgotten today. Years ago I studied for a doctorate in English literature of the period, and I'd never once heard of her. Lucasta Miller's biography of this overlooked, perhaps neglected, writer is easily one of the best reads I've enjoyed this year…although I have several caveats about the author’s writing choices.

L.E.L. was as much an exercise in marketing and branding as she was an artist. When her first-person poetry began appearing in William Jerdan's Literary Gazette, the first literary periodical to be published on a weekly basis, her passionate poems invited a confessional reading and hinted of sexual experience, related through abstract imagery. L.E.L. was embraced and celebrated by adherents to the 'Satanic School,’ dismissively so called by then-Poet Laureate Robert Southey—enthusiasts of the Romantic movement of previous decades. Although Shelley and Byron were no more by the time L.E.L. emerged, she claimed them (and, presumably, their libertine lifestyles) as her inspirations. By insinuating her status as a ‘fallen woman,' became a sensation among the many young men of the Satanic School still sporting their shocking open-necked shirts.

The poet's output, however, was very much a tightrope act between encoding through erotic imagery her propensity for Romantic sexual freedom, while refusing to admit to wrong-doing. When L.E.L. was unveiled as Letitia Landon, the teen protégée of Jerdan, her unsavory publisher, rumors began to fly of a sexual relationship between the two—rumors that Landon made certain to confound with girlish, innocent, and downright simpering behavior in public. The truth was, however, that not only did Landon owe her start in the public eye to Jerdan, writing for him at a punishing rate and acting as his unpaid literary flunky for years, but she as well bore him three illegitimate children.

L.E.L.'s sexual indiscretions were much gossiped about by London society—and at one point, were even printed in the Sunday Times, causing damage to her literary brand. Throughout this low point of her career, however, L.E.L. issued both rebuttals to her critics, while still inviting her readers to read between her florid lines to glimpse the sexual imagery of her confessional verses. By the time L.E.L. began writing for Fraser’s Magazine as its only female contributor in 1830, however, it was clear that she had become the butt of society's joke, instead of maintaining control over her own narrative; in its pages the magazine welcomed her with a barely-veiled suggestion of literary bukkake in which its male writers were advised to unsheath their pens and ‘unink’ themselves all over the poetess. Even actor William Macready pronounced her a fallen woman.

With a blemished reputation, though still protesting her virginal innocence, Landon was forced into a fascinating third and final act to her lifelong drama—marriage. Miller admirably narrates not only the far-from-certain alliance Landon made with a (possible, if not probable) enabler of the slave trade, but delves deeply into the final days of Landon’s life, in which she died from her own hand by prussic acid. Was the death accidental? Did she take her own life? Was the poet murdered by the vengeful common-law wife of her new husband? The whole affair is messy and at times inscrutable, but Miller has her own opinions on how Landon’s demise, like her poetry, should be read.

As fascinating as this biography was to gallop through, I’m perhaps most taken aback by Miller’s neglect—truthfully, it almost borders on stubborn refusal—to include much of L.E.L.’s actual poetry to support her claims. She’ll quote a verse here, and a snippet there, but for the most part, Miller merely makes generalizations about L.E.L.’s output without much supporting primary evidence.

And often Miller’s fancy will run free in her dogged determination to make L.E.L. as saucy as possible. Quoting a verse in which L.E.L. refers to chains around her wrists, Miller makes the mental leap that chains leave scars, and that people pick at their own scars (is she confusing scars with scabs, I wonder, for I have a couple of scars I’ve never been tempted to pick?), and of course that the image of picking at a scar is basically a stand-in for masturbation. My reaction: huh? There’s apparently plenty of L.E.L.’s verse that’s sexual enough, without having to fudge it.

Honestly: if I’d been a professor of Miller’s and she’d submitted a thesis with such gratuitous leaps of logic, compounded by her agenda of rehabilitating L.E.L.’s literary standing without actually providing examples of L.E.L.’s poetry, I’d have given her a failing grade. But since I’m not, and since Miller made a book about an obscure poet of whom I’d never heard into one of the most fascinating reads I’ve had in a long time, I’ll give Miller’s biography a hearty recommendation.

[Genevieve Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This charming and engaging unravels the mysteries around Letitia Landon, or L.E.L., who was known in her time as the female Byron and who died under mysterious circumstances of cyanide poisoning. Though Letitia has been all but forgotten in modern times, recent discoveries and thorough research have shed new light upon her life and her death, and the fascinating literary subculture she inhabited.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into the lottery of literary fame. Fantastically well-researched. But, in my opinion, desperately over-reaches about LEL's talent, and the importance/interest of the minutiae of her life, making the middle section of the book, sadly, quite a slog, and burying some of the really interesting and important points that Miller has to make.

Rock-star poet of the 1820s, "L.E.L." (Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 1802-1837) is nothing short of a gift to a biographer: so thoroughly forgotten, and alien to modern tastes, that every word about her comes as a revelation. Whirling around so many literary and social circles of her day that you can honestly say that, if LEL didn't know you, then you really weren't worth knowing; and if you didn't have an opinion about LEL (pitying, bitchy, kind, cruel, take your pick) then you really weren't up to much. Surrounded, all of her short and ultimately tragic, life by people who really did do nothing but scribble, scribble, scribble, so the wealth of diaries, letters, newspaper articles and other documentation that survive, and can be used to piece together her life, almost day by day, is quite incredible.

And there's the tragedy (and mystery) of her untimely death at 35: suicide, accident or murder? All so thoroughly documented that it's possible, 180-odd years after the sad events, to feel that Miller is cross-examining the witnesses in real-time, and could easily demand a post-mortem.

But ... is it possible to have too much of a good thing? (Hint: yes.) Miller is, in my opinion, so enchanted by "LEL" (on every level -- by her writing; by the modern-feeling transgressions of her life; by the modern-feeling lessons about the fleeting nature and cost of celebrity; by the "ease" with which she can be summoned back from critical obscurity and even death; and yes, by the drama of that death ... ) that she puts some of her critical judgement on hold, and loses her focus.

I have to be honest here, and admit that I found LEL's poetry excruciating, both in style and subject. (With some notable exceptions ... the final poems she wrote, on her voyage to Africa after her marriage, are actually very touching.) Much of Miller's case for the poetry seems like special pleading: it's good because it's a true expression of LEL's experience, and if it seems bad, you just need to understand LEL better, and then you will see that it's good.

The very badness of the lines is shifty. ... The creaking versification only comes to life if one imagines Letitia speaking the words with coquettishly simulated wide-eyed innocence.

Hmmmm ... I don't think so. Again and again and again, Miller conflates the content of LEL's poetry with what's going on in her life, and LEL's response to those events. Lines about 'a wreath of fragile flowers' are obviously "Letitia ... asking for the return of the virginity that she had traded ... for her career." And "Letitia made her surrogate, L.E.L., threaten suicide, so that she would not have to do so herself." REALLY?

Miller herself admits that this is "one of the knottiest philosophical problems in criticism: that of authorial intentionality," and in my opinion, she completely misses the point. Authors make things up: that's what they do.

Miller admits that Landon's public person was often wildly at odds with the poetic persona of LEL, but ignores the possibility that, in her poetry, Landon was being just as tongue-in-cheek, and over the top as Byron had been in his mock-heroic epics -- that what she wrote as LEL was a fiction, or hyperbole, or marketable nonsense. Miller's thesis is that it was all a coded message, straight from her heart, telling us all we need to know about Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

There is fascinating detail, and much interesting social literary context here: Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem that uses a refrain from one of LEL's last poems to reflect on the way the literary world treats clever women. And George Eliot telegraphed the moral and intellectual emptiness of one of the characters in Middlemarch by making her a big fan of LEL. Who knew?

[Delphine · Rating 3 out of 5]

L.E.L. is the pen name of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, a popular female poet in the 1820s and 1830s. She embodies the voice of the 'lost generation' between the Romantics (Byron, Keats and Shelley) and the Victorians. Although very productive in her days, L.E.L. is now literally 'lost' and excluded from the 19thC literary canon.

Lucasta Miller tries to figure out why in this biography. The reasons she unearths are baffling and shed a merciless light on the 19thC and its treatment of women and female authors. Letitia Elizabeth Landon started publishing poetry after her father's bankruptcy; it was a way for him of supplementing his resources. Aged only 19, she fell into the hands of publisher William Jerdan, a predator with a fondness for young girls. While patronising her as a Pygmalion, he fathered three illegitimate children with her. He managed her finances and reduced her to poverty. She was forced to abandon poetry when the novel came into vogue and finally degraded herself to writing verse for annuals. Then he left her for another teenage poetess.

L.E.L. took most of the scandal, especially as her poetry itself dealt with thwarted romantic love, masochistic pain and self destruction. Reviewers put her down as a saccharine lady sentimentalist or as a dubious satanic poetess (Byron and Shelley got away with this, a woman didn't).

She was forever stigmatised as '(sexually) damaged goods' and ended up marrying a governor in West Africa, who already felt sorry for his marriage proposal after the words left his mouth (not to mention the fact that he was already wedded to a native African woman). Two months after sailing for West Africa, she was found dead next to a bottle of prussic acid. Was it murder, suicide, or an accidental death?

Miller's book highlights the double standards of the 19thC. There is a remarkable parallel with our social media culture of today: the need to 'perform', to be seen, the voyeuristic side, the stigmatisation. It's a sobering portrait of the 19thC and the blight of being a woman in that age. Miller did some thorough research for this novel and this is reflected in her writing style, which is (a bit too) dense and scholarly at times -, hence the three stars.

[Brad White · Rating 3 out of 5]

In brief:
Lucasta Miller is a celebrated literary analyst whose knowledge and research of the Brontë’s is unmatched, even being included as part of the introduction for the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights.
But she should stick to her subject.

L.E.L was readable. It did make me want to read the literary works of Letitia Landon (which are sparse) but I wanted to read her works more than Miller’s. Miller’s account of the scandalous life of L.E.L is more informative of the time period than of Letitia herself. If interested in the Romantic period, particularly the transition between glamorous and celebrity Romantic literature to the strict and Christian Victorian literature, it is a must-read. But if at all interested in L.E.L herself there are probably more interesting critics elsewhere. Miller scandalises her life far too much. Calling her the ‘female byron’ is likely for publicity purposes and she tries to relate Letitia to famous authors such as Jane Austen and Percy Shelley through relatives of her friend’s dog. (hyperbolically stated in this review but it carries the same point) L.E.L is too dramatised, targeted at the mass audience rather than literary critics and analysts unlike her book on the Brontës.

Would I recommend it? Probably if you’re interested in Romantic literature. However be prepared for lots of dramatisation and unnecessary linking to random authors of the period who were irrelevant to the life of Letitia Landon.

[LillyBooks]

DNF page 100 or 150 or so (it's been awhile).

I wanted to love this book, and there's a lot of things here that are in my wheelhouse. As the title implies, I'd never heard of Landon before (or L.E.L. as she published under) and I was eager to learn about her and restore her to her rightful place in literature for myself, at least. I have nothing but respect for the clear effort Miller put into this thoroughly researched work. But I just couldn't stick with it. It's fairly academic and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for that (I'm in a writing phrase right now, and I usually prefer to read lighter things when writing for contrast to all the work I'm doing). Honestly, not knowing the woman in question was a bit of double-edged sword because I had no context or curiosity about things I'd heard to bring me back to her. Additionally, I would have preferred that her poems had been quoted in greater length. Miller would try to explain the meaning or symbolism of a poem, but the reader wasn't given the source material for reference and that was frustrating.

[Elaine Ruth Boe · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was refreshing to read a biography and poetry analysis, since I've mostly read fiction or personal essays since grad school.

Following Miller's commentary was enjoyable and rewarding, although I believe we should always be careful when reading literary works autobiographically. Miller makes a strong argument for how LEL used her poetic voice to express a façade of her identity. But sometimes Miller extrapolated about Letitia's biographical facts based on the poetry.

In many ways Letitia's life was frustrating to read about, because she was sidelined and undermined so often because of her gender. Her relationship with her publisher and lover Jerden was maddening. And the double standards for liberated women versus men, while nothing new to read about, still left me indignant. I wasn't very familiar with the literary world of the 1820s and 30s, so I also enjoyed filling in that gap in my British Lit knowledge.

Not too heavily academic. And very dramatic in some places because Letitia's life was rather scandalous.

[Etta Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "female Byron"Another great biography of a forgotten woman writer who churned out the pages during her life, winning quite a following of fans. Lucasta Miller's story begins with the gripping mystery of L.E.L's death by prussic acid in Cape Coast Castle, Africa. From there, she unwinds the many events that led Letitia Elizbeth to come to be known as L.E.L. and "the female Byron." Truly another sad case of the work many women do behind the scenes without getting the recognition their male peers expect and demand. And, of course, it includes the double-standards of judgment for their behaviors that stray outside the bounds of what's deemed appropriate.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched, comprehensive and entertaining read.

However, as other reviewers have noted, there are times when analysis is obscured by assumptions about the emotional state of individuals from history.

This becomes a bigger problem when applied to readings of L.E.L’s poetry as if her work has been proven beyond doubt to reflect the specific moments Miller relates from Leticia Landon’s life.

Miller often reiterates the division between Leticia the person and L.E.L the poet, while acknowledging the purpose and consequences of her ambiguity. So these moments of unsubstantiated blurring in Miller’s biography read all the more strangely because of the earlier caution and distinctions.

My only other complaint is personal - a throwaway line about the ‘loathsome Rosamond’ Vincy from Middlemarch - but I won’t hold it against the author of an otherwise admirable book.

In fact, I loved this read so much that I’ve been persuaded to seek out Lucasta Miller’s other books.

Four stars.

[Katedurie50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miller is a very good literary biographer, and this surprising and scandalous story does not disappoint. We learn most about an age through its by-ways sometimes and this illuminates the 'strange pause' between Romanticism and the Victorians. There is the deep ambiguity of the 'virgin poetess', writing for a respectable public and especially young women ( she was admired by the Brontes, Elizabeth Barrett, Christina Rossetti) but moving in largely male and predatory literary circles. She had three children by her editor, older and married, who exploited her financially as well as sexually; as he liked young women, he eventually dumped her (and his next mistress gave him thirteen children.) So what L.E.L. became skilled at was in creating masks that enabled her to move in different worlds. But she ran out of room to do this, married in haste a man who clearly regretted the proposal, was carried off to Africa and killed herself within two months of arrival.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic. Miller makes a really convincing case that LEL gets left out of the literary canon and scorned by early 2oth-century writers because the incestuous literary circle of her day went to such pains to conceal her scandalous life that after her death her poems were not read in the context in which they were written. Instead of realizing the irony and the doublespeak, Woolf and others read her poems straight as treacly love lyrics according to Miller.

One of the things this book has me thinking about is the joy and frustration of studying the nineteenth century. So much is lost, unknowable, permanently ambiguous, and that's maddening. But it's also exhilarating. In these lacunae dwells the fun of interpretation and interpolation and inference. I wonder sometimes if scholars in the future will experience the same passion for studying the lives of 21st century people where all is digitally recorded and easily available and nothing left to mystery.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

L.E.L. was a fascinating read of an poet I was unaware of. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, author and applauded poet of her era bravely sought a literary place and recognition within a patriarchal world. In order to maintain her standing in London's literary notoriety she chose to hide her illicit affair and subsequent pregnancies. Lucasta Miller teases out through detailed research the story of L.E.L.'s life and her possibly suicidal death in West Africa. If only those last two letters she wrote fell into the right hands. Lucasta has well researched and referenced appropriately revealing a interesting read of a enigmatic and interesting poetess from English history.

[Amy Bernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm grateful to live in an age when brilliant women buried under centuries of misogyny and patriarchy can be resurrected and restored to their rightful place in history. Landon's story full deserves this treatment. While this is a biography, I found it cloying at times, with the narrative almost doubling back on itself rather than moving forward. I also found myself wishing for a compelling fictional version of Landon's life, with appropriate artistic license taken to bring the woman and her complexities fully to life. If Merchant & Ivory were still around to make films, this would be perfect material for them.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letitia Landon was a internationally known poet of the late 19th century; starting after her suspicious death in 1838, her work was sentimentalized in an effort to clean up her image. As a result, we don't have the context to truly understand her work, argues Lucasta Miller. Although I had a few quibbles with the book--more than once Miller evokes "hell" from the LEL initials Landon wrote under and there's a SUPRISE interpretation included toward the end--the work is a solid examination of the catch-22 of the preVictorian confessional woman writer. LEL was a fascinating character worth reading about.

[Kagey Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Infuriating, informative deep dive into the pre-Victorian literary scene and the career of a now-forgotten poetess, LEL, who was the tabloid fodder of her day. This book also chronicles her unhappy love life, including with her “Svengali” who groomed her from a young age and offered her a Faustian bargain of a literary career in exchange for sexual favors (and, in the honor-obsessed era, her reputation). I’m not usually one for nonfiction but this was great.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me much-needed insight into Letitia Elizabeth Landon's life and, if I'm honest, left me feeling fiercely protective of an author whose literary legacy deserves the revival it's now receiving (and then some). The depth of research and care Miller gives to untangling the truth of Landon's history, work, and impact is in itself inspiring. I'm grateful to be able to use this text as a resource in my own research and academic writing.

[poesielos]

DNF 27% | Der Einstieg mit L.E.L.s Tod war super und doof gleichzeitig: Damit ist das spannendste eigentlich direkt vom Tisch. Ich mochte zwar, was ich bisher gelesen habe, aber es ist sehr schwerfällig und einen Tick zu akademisch geschrieben... und nach 1,5 Monaten habe ich immer noch keine Lust weiterzulesen.

[David Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A triumph of original research and riveting storytelling” is not an exaggeration. The author’s writing is refreshingly erudite — a lesson in English vocabulary. Quite extraordinary. So too the tale of L.E.L.’s death which still remains highly controversial. Her personal life and the lives of those intertwined around her provide a revelation to the literary world of the period. Especially recommended to those interested in poetry.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Letitia’s life intertwined with many familiar names and historical events, and Miller did a beautiful job of presenting her story.

[Aishuu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about 5 percent in and gave up. The writing style is so poetical and time-skipping that it can't manage the narrative. It was incoherent to me.

[Kate]

Shortlisted for national book critics award biography 2020