Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (born August 14, 1802 in Chelsea (London) , † October 15, 1838 in Cape Coast Castle , Gold Coast ) was a British poet and novelist. The author, who was well-known in Great Britain at her time, wrote under the pseudonym of her initials, LEL. Shortly after her marriage to George Maclean , the governor of Cape Coast Castle, in June 1838 , she sailed with him to the British "protected area" in West Africa, but died there a few months later under mysterious circumstances.

biography

Early life

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who was born on August 14, 1802 at 25 Hans Place in Chelsea, was born into an upper-class British family who had lost much of their fortune before Letitia was born because of the South Sea bubble . Letitia was the eldest child of military contractor John Landon and a mother of Welsh descent, Catherine Jane, b. Bishop. Her grandfather, who was named John Landon like her father, was a country pastor who was strongly against dissenters . In addition to her brother Whittington Henry, two years younger than her, with whom she always had a close relationship, she had a younger sister, Elizabeth Jane, who was in poor health and died in 1825 at the age of just 13.

Letitia Landon had mastered reading since she was a child. From the age of five, she attended 22 Hans Place in Chelsea for two years, the same school run by the poet Frances Rowden, where Mary Russell Mitford and Caroline Lamb had received their education. Here Letitia acquired a good knowledge of French. In 1809 the Landons moved to a large country house called Trevor Park, which was near East Barnet , an area in what is now north London. John Landon was now on the project of running a model farm on the nearby Coventry Farm. Letitia was brought up by her older cousin Elizabeth, enjoyed reading, for example Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe , and soon showed signs of her literary talent. She knew how to invent long stories that she also knew how to dress in metric form. Often she would walk the walks in Trevor Park or wake up the night reciting her verses out loud.

The mismanagement of the manager of his farm and the bankruptcy of the army delivery agency Adair & Co, in which he was involved, put John Landon in a difficult financial position, so that he and his family moved first to Fulham in 1815 and to Old Brompton in 1816 , where they relatively lived in isolation.

Early literary activity

The circumstances of her family led Letitia Landon , who wrote in the transition phase from high romanticism to Victorianism , as a young woman to publish the products of her pen, which consisted for a long time in smaller songs and larger epic-lyrical poems, until later she also found a brilliant prose style in novels developed.

In Old Brompton, Landon made the acquaintance of her neighbor William Jerdan , editor of the influential weekly literary magazine Literary Gazette , to whom her mother gave her early poetic attempts for review. Jerdan assessed Landon's poetry quite positively, so that her first published work was the short poem Rome on March 11, 1820 in the Literary Gazette ; it was signed with the initial L.

Landon now hoped to earn some money through her writing, as her poems continued to be published by Jerdan, who remained her most loyal literary friend and contributed not a little to the recognition of her poetic fame. With financial support from her grandmother and her friend, the actress Sarah Siddons , she gave the poetry collection The Fate of Adelaide under her full name in August 1821 . A Swiss Romantic tale and other poems , which sold quite well, but from which the author could not make any financial profit due to the bankruptcy of her publisher a month later.

At this point Landon began on Jerdan's order with regular publications of Poetical Sketches in the Literary Gazette , which contributions to this magazine she wrote continuously until the summer of 1824 under the pseudonym "LEL". Although her wages for this writing activity were low, public interest in the unknown poet rose considerably and speculation about her identity flourished. Jerdan did not reveal who she was, but soon revealed, in the face of numerous inquiries, that it was a young lady in her teenage years. Landon also worked as an influential reviewer in the Literary Gazette , but always wrote her book reviews anonymously, so that only a few can be assigned to her.

In 1824 Landon's 300-page work The Improvisatrice, and other poems was published , which met with divided judgment from literary critics, but was well received by the majority of its readership and went through six editions in the first year. The young title heroine, the improvisation (ie impromptu poet), tells the sad story of her love for Lorenzo as a framework story, who reciprocates it, but is already engaged to another woman named Ianthe and marries her. After the death of his wife, he wants to return to his lover, who has meanwhile also changed due to lovesickness and only remains visible on a painting as the Apollo priestess . In interspersed reports and songs, she also describes other unhappy love relationships.

In the same year 1824, shortly before the publication of the Improvisatrice , Landon's father died at the age of 68. His family had only modest financial resources at that time. Because she fell out with her mother, Landon moved to live with her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Bishop, on London's Sloane Street . However, she continued to use her substantial income over time to pay for her younger brother Whittington Henry's college education and to support her mother. The release of The Troubadour. Catalog of pictures, and historical sketches (1825) made her even more popular in literary terms, but her social status as an independent, single woman and the preferred theming of love in her poetry meant that she was accused of numerous alleged affairs. Tabloids like The Wasp ran scandalous reports on them; so it was claimed in 1826 that she had become pregnant by Jerdan. According to a study by Cynthia Lawford published in the London Review of Books in 2000, Landon actually had a 15-year secret liaison with Jerdan, giving birth to three illegitimate children, Ella, Fred and Laura, between 1822 and 1829. Landon and her friends always tried to dispel rumors about their sex life.

When her grandmother died in 1826, Landon moved to an attic apartment in her old school on Hans Place, now run by the Lance ladies. She published the two collections of poetry The Golden Violet, with its tales of Romance and Chivalry; and other poems (1827) and The Venetian Bracelet, The Lost Pleiad, A History of the Lyre, and other poems (1829), whose long title poems are very similar to those of their earlier works The Improvisatrice and The Troubadour as well as that of their 1835 collection The Vow of the Peacock, and other poems . The content of these larger lyrical-epic poems is formed by chivalry, song and unhappy love. Her growing fame was reflected in increasing imitation of her poetic style. However, the efforts of her extensive writing contributed to her frequent illnesses such as headaches and nervous disorders.

Later career as a novelist

From 1830, Landon began writing novels in which she laid down the matured experiences of her life. This partial change in the literary genre contributed to the realization that the novel was now a more sought-after genre than poetry and that a debut in this field could again attract greater public acclaim and subsequently improve her finances further. In her first novel, Romance and Reality (1831), which sold well, she displayed a very different style of writing than her poetry, and reviewers praised the witty, satirical commentary on modern life that it revealed. Like her novels Francesca Carrara (1834) and Ethel Churchill (1837), the work is rich in lyrical content, vigorous in character and effective through the groupings. As in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811), Romance and Reality emphasizes the contrast between his two heroines. The author also weaves rather moralizing reflections into the plot.

Landon had now established himself as an integral part of the London literary scene and took part in numerous literary meetings at which she was able to win over many visitors, even though Disraeli , for example , was averse to her. The often portrayed, dark-haired and brown-eyed author seems to have been very fashion-conscious and to have particularly attached to exotic fashion trends; so she appears in numerous of her portraits in dresses with flowing club sleeves and wearing enormous hats.

In her second novel, Francesca Carrara , Landon sketches a portrait of the royalist and Puritan parties in England in the 17th century and at the court of Louis XIV. The fictional, romantically depicted main character is embedded in a melodramatic, albeit improbable, plot that takes place against an authentic historical background .

In June 1834, Landon went on a pleasure trip to Paris . Although she had the chance to meet personalities like Heine and Chateaubriand , she was bored with sightseeing in the French capital and the fact that there were few major social events worth visiting.

John Forster, Landon's short-term fiance

In 1834 Landon became engaged to the 10 years younger publicist John Forster , who later became the biographer of Charles Dickens . But the mid-1820s allegations of indecent dealings with Jerdan revived and were extended to relationships with William Maginn , Daniel Maclise and Edward Bulwer-Lytton . Forster asked Landon to refute these rumors, whereupon she recommended that he consult her friends. Forster was then convinced of her innocence and asked for her hand, but instead she broke off the engagement, according to her presentation to her friend Bulwer-Lytton, because she did not want to enter into a marriage with a man of so little sensitivity. For some time now she was very depressed.

Landon's work Traits and Trails of Early life , published in 1836 and already seeing its third edition in the early 1840s, is a group of moralistic short stories for young people and was intended to win over the newly discovered young audience. Landon showed a remarkable advancement of her romance technique and a more realistic portrayal of the characters in Ethel Churchill (1837). The typically early Victorian novel was considered by English literary critics to be her most successful prose work, despite some weaknesses such as excessive sentimentality and frequent insertions of personal reflections by the author.

Furthermore, since the early 1820s, Landon wrote many smaller poems for the Literary Gazette , the New Monthly Magazine, and other magazines, and especially for some of the then very fashionable almanacs, forerunners of modern luxury illustrated books. Her seals are characterized by gentle melancholy, delicate feeling, rich imagination and successful expression. For example, she published Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book from 1832 and wrote all of its lyrical content for the engravings shown in it. She wrote many of these poems to illustrate engravings from the sketchbook of Captain Robert Elliott, who worked for the British East India Company and was a friend of Landon's former housemate Emma Roberts. At the end of the 1835 edition of Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, Landon et al. the eight-page poem The Fairy of the Fountains , dealing with the myth of the serpent woman Melusine , which competes with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel and John Keats ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819). Landon also designed the poems for The Easter Gift (1832), the Book of Beauty (1833) and the Flowers of Loveliness (1838). Her subjects for pictures ( New Monthly Magazine , 1836–38) demonstrated her greatest mastery in the improvisational art of drawing material for casual poems from paintings .

Marriage and death

In October 1836, at a dinner party held at Matthew Forster's house, Landon met George Maclean , Governor of Cape Coast Castle (in present-day Ghana), who was on home leave. Soon the two began a relationship. But at the beginning of the next year Maclean left the author to her annoyance and retired to Scotland. Rumor has it that he should have an African wife by now. At the urging of Landon's friends, Maclean finally returned to London and there secretly married Landon on June 7, 1838, in St Mary's Church , Bryanston Square . On July 5th, shortly after Queen Victoria's coronation , the newly married couple sailed from the southern English port city of Portsmouth , set course for the West African coast and arrived at their destination, Cape Coast Castle, on August 16, 1838.

Landon's letters to friends over the next two months give conflicting accounts of their health and feelings. After this short period, she died under mysterious circumstances. On the morning of October 15, 1838, she was found dead in her bedroom by her servant, Emily Bailey. She was stretched out on the floor; her hand held an empty bottle of hydrogen cyanide . At a judicial examination carried out the following afternoon, the doctor on duty took the view that an autopsy was not necessary. But the affidavits of the witnesses, including Maclean and Mrs. Bailey, are contradictory and incomplete. The mortuary inspection commission attributed the cause of the poet's death to the careless ingestion of an overdose of hydrogen cyanide, a highly toxic substance she had used in a highly diluted form as a medicine for cramps. Landon's body was buried at the Cape Coast Castle practice site that evening.

The mysterious circumstances of Landon's death at the age of only 36, as well as the hasty and imprecise investigation of its cause, led to speculation in England that the poet had killed herself or that the alleged former African lover of her husband was the victim of revenge. Maclean himself was also suspected of murdering his wife. But despite the efforts of her family and some of her friends, who soon wrote numerous memoranda about the deceased, the official version of accidental poisoning could not be refuted. However, the circumstances of her death are still considered unsatisfactory. Because of her early and mysterious death, she was remembered by her compatriots for a long time. She exerted considerable influence on later Victorian poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning .

Works

• The Fate of Adelaide. A Swiss Romantic tale and other poems. London: John Warren, 1821.
• Fragments in Rhyme . London. The Literary Gazette , 1822-23.
• Poetic Sketches (5 series) . London. The Literary Gazette , 1822-24.
• Medallion Wafers . London. The Literary Gazette , 1823.
• Poetical Catalog of Pictures . London. The Literary Gazette , 1823.
• The improvisation and other poems, with embellishments . London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1824; Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1825.
• The troubadour. Catalog of pictures, and historical sketches . London: Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1825; Philadelphia: Carey, 1825.
• The Golden Violet, with its tales of Romance and Chivalry; and other poems . London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827; Philadelphia: HC Carey & I. Lea, 1827.
• The Venetian Bracelet, The Lost Pleiad, A History of the Lyre, and other poems . London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829; Boston: Cottons & Barnard, 1830.
• Romance and Reality . 3 vols., London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831; 2 vols., New York: J. & J. Harper, 1832.
• The Easter Gift, A Religious Offering . London: Fisher, Son, & Co, 1832.
• Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Books . 8 vols., London & Paris: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1832–1839.
• The Book of Beauty; or, Regal Gallery. London: Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1833.
• The Enchantress and Other Tales. In: The Novelists Magazine 1 (1833): 90-118.
• Metrical versions of the Odes tr. In Corinne or Italy by Madame de Staël tr. By Isabel Hill. London: Richard Bentley, 1833.
• Francesca Carrara . 3 vols., London: Richard Bentley, 1834; Philadelphia, 1835.
• The Vow of the Peacock, and other poems . London: Saunders and Otley, 1835.
• Versions from the German . London: The Literary Gazette , 1835.
• Traits and Trials of Early Life . London: H. Colburn, 1836; Philadelphia: EL Carey & A. Hart, 1837.
• Subjects for Pictures . London: The New Monthly Magazine , 1836-38.
• Ethel Churchill; or, The Two Brides . 3 vols., London: Henry Colburn, 1837; Philadelphia, 1838.
• Flowers of Loveliness . London: Ackerman & Co., 1838.
• Duty and Inclination: A Novel (as Ed.). London: Henry Colburn, 1838.
• The Female Picture Gallery . London: The New Monthly Magazine , 1838 and Laman Blanchard.
• Castruccio Castrucani, a tragedy in 5 acts . 1838, in: Laman Blanchard.
• The Zenana, and minor poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon . London: Fisher, Son & Co, 1839.

expenditure

• WB Scott (Ed.): The poetical works of Letitia Elizabeth Landon with an introductory memoir , 1873, new ed. 1880.
• FJ Sypher (Ed.): Poetical works of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 'LEL' , 1990.
• Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess (Eds.): Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Selected Writings , Peterborough, Ontario, 1997 (modern critical edition).

literature

• Isobel Armstrong: Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, Politics , London 1993.
• Helen Ashton: Letty Landon , New York 1951.
• Samuel Laman Blanchard: Life and Literary Remains of Letitia Elizabeth Landon . 2 vols., London and Philadelphia 1841, new ed. 2 vols., 1855.
• Glennis Byron: Landon, Letitia Elizabeth . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). Vol. 32 (2004), pp. 391-394.
• Anne K. Elwood: Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England from the Commencement of the Last Century , London 1843, pp. 304-332.
• Richard Garnett: Landon, Letitia Elizabeth . In. Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Vol. 32 (1892), pp. 52-54.
• Michael Gorman: LEL - The Life And Murder of Letitia E. Landon - a Flower of Loveliness , London 2008, ISBN 978-1905513703 .
• Anna Maria and SC Hall: Memories of Authors: Miss Landon . In: Atlantic Monthly 15 (1865), pp. 330-340.
• William Jerdan: The Autobiography of William Jerdan: with his literary, political, and social reminiscences and correspondence during the last fifty years , 4 vols., London 1852–53, vol. 3.
• Cynthia Lawford: Diary . In: London Review of Books , Vol. 22, No. 18 (September 21, 2000), pp. 36-37 ( limited preview ).
• Susan Matoff: Conflicted Life: William Jerdan, 1782-1869 . Eastbourne, 2011.
• Lucasta Miller: LEL: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” . London: Cape, 2019, ISBN 978-0-375-41278-3
• Brenda H. Renalds: Letitia Elizabeth Landon: A Literary Life . Philosophical Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1985.
• Brenda H. Renalds: Letitia Elizabeth Landon . In: Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB), Vol. 96 (1990), pp. 220-228.
• Emma Roberts: Memoir of Letitia Elizabeth Landon . In: The Zenana and Minor Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon , London, 1839, pp. 5-36.
• Glennis Stevenson: Letitia Landon: The Woman behind LEL , Manchester, UK., 1995.
• Katherine Thomson and Philip Wharton. The Queens of Society , New York 1860, pp. 145-178.
• Julie Watt: Poisoned Lives: The Regency Poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (LEL) and British Gold Coast Administrator George Maclean , Brighton 2010, ISBN 978-1-84519-420-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Letitia Elizabeth Landon in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Glennis Byron, ODNB, vol. 32, p. 391; Brenda H. Renalds, DLB, Vol. 96, p. 221.
2. ↑ Glennis Byron, ODNB, Vol. 32, pp. 391ff .; Brenda H. Renalds, DLB, Vol. 96, pp. 221ff.
3. ↑ Glennis Byron, ODNB, vol. 32, p. 393; Brenda H. Renalds, DLB, vol. 96, p. 223ff.
4. ↑ Glennis Byron, ODNB, Vol. 32, pp. 393f .; Brenda H. Renalds, DLB, vol. 96, p. 225.