L.E.L.

December 1, 2018
A scholarly, riveting life of an English poet and novelist whose precocious career ended in sexual scandal and controversy about her sudden death.Literary critic Miller (The Brontë Myth, 2004), the founding editorial director of independent British publisher Notting Hill Editions, successfully returns to public awareness the astonishing (and brief) career and achievements of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838), who, for a time, seemed to create poems as easily as she breathed. However, her personal life--scandalous to the emerging Victorians--sent her stock plummeting, and she died in West Africa of causes whose mysteries Miller does much to dispel. The author begins with Landon's death, provides a quick sketch of her initial popularity, and then returns to a fairly strict chronology. Miller describes her subject's background and her long association and sexual relationship with her married mentor, William Jerdan, editor at the time of the Literary Gazette. Jerdan promoted her career--and sired her three children, none of whom remained in her care, or his. For a while, L.E.L., as she signed her pieces, was a literary sensation, and Miller places her as sort of a transitional figure between the Romantics (Shelley, Byron et al.) and the Victorians. The text, in fact, is populated heavily with literary heavyweights, including Dickens, the Brontës, Poe, Woolf, and numerous others. The extent of Miller's research is impressive and includes her visit to the scene of Landon's death. The author seems to have read everything even marginally relevant, and she maintains a strong auctorial presence, noting--bluntly and accurately--the era's male literary dominance and the grotesque double standard of private behavior. Libidinous men suffered few consequences: Jerdan himself moved on to another teenager after he tired of Landon.A thorough, engaging, and even loving restoration of a woman writer whose story needed to be told and whose works required fresh, attentive eyes.

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Critic Miller crafts a fascinating narrative that is as much about the volatile ways in which gender intersects with cultural practices, including drug addiction, sexuality, colonialism, and creativity as it is about her provocative subject, Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-38), aka L.E.L. By writing the life story of this post-Romantic novelist and poet, as known (or perhaps more accurately for us, unknown) by her initials as her full name, Miller draws attention to how the poet's liminal cultural and literary position contributed to forming her identity--and how Victorian reshaping of the literary canon led to the loss of her works, beautifully paying homage to her literary contributions supplemented with historical context and showcasing her most frequently used rhyme, fame/shame. The couplet seems, at first glance, a prescription but ultimately expresses L.E.L.'s relentless defiance of expectations. VERDICT Suitable for readers interested in Romantic and Victorian poetry as well as those seeking out lost female writers.--Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

February 15, 2019
Literary critic Miller resurrects the all-but-forgotten life and once radiant literary career of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, whose success earned her a sobriquet: the Female Byron. Bursting onto the bustling London literary scene at the age of 18 in 1820, Landon, better known by her initials, L.E.L., caused quite a stir with her short stories, novels, and, most especially, her poetry. Daring, passionate, and juicy with sentiment and sensibility, her works evoked a range of intense emotions on the part of readers and critics precariously poised between the Romantic and Victorian eras. Unfortunately, sensation turned to scandal when rumors of a blatant affair with her publisher were confirmed. After being ostracized for daring to challenge prevailing sexual mores and double standards, L.E.L.'s literary flame was doused and her fame was quickly diminished. Hastily marrying in order to escape the hypocritical social circles that judged her so harshly, she died under mysterious circumstances in Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, in 1838. A scholarly and compelling examination of an unjustly marginalized literary life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)