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  • Published: 16 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473571716
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

L.E.L.

The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron"




A famous poet, a mysterious death and a story stranger than fiction.

A famous poet, a mysterious death and a story stranger than fiction. - this is the lost life and mytserious death of the 'Female Byron'

On 15 October 1838, the body of a thirty-six-year-old woman was found in Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, a bottle of prussic acid in her hand. She was one of the most famous English poets of her day: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, known by her initials 'L.E.L.'

What was she doing in Africa? Was her death an accident? Had she committed suicide, or even been murdered?

To her contemporaries, she was an icon, hailed as the 'female Byron'. However, she was also a woman with secrets, the mother of three illegitimate children whose existence was subsequently wiped from the record. After her death, she became the subject of a cover-up which this book unravels, excavating with it a whole lost literary culture.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BRONTE MYTH

  • Published: 16 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473571716
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

About the author

Lucasta Miller

Dr Lucasta Miller is the author of The Brontë Myth and a literary journalist whose work has appeared in a wide number of publications, especially the Guardian. She has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford and a visiting fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

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Praise for L.E.L.

A riveting, tantalisingly ambiguous portrait of a poet whose confessional voice makes her only more intriguing to modern readers.

Hephzibah Anderson, Observer