L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon). L.E.L. on Corfu

I was interested to see a new book about L.E.L. by Lucaster Miller in a Dupont Circle bookshop.

L.E.L.

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

A review

I wrote the following lines after visiting Ghana and Cape Coast Castle back in 1980. I was intrigued by what I heard and read at the time about L.E.L.'s life and death. Much later I read Germaine Greer's "Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet".

L.E.L. - On an Entry in the Dictionary of National Biography

(Letitia Elizabeth Landon, born Chelsea 1802, buried Cape Coast Castle, 1838)

Cultivated men summed up

the value of her short life’s worth:

“As a poetess…diffuse”.

Self-destruction the enduring verdict

(by prussic acid, but no post-mortem),

in spite of darker speculation

of murder by her cultured husband,

or by his jealous Gold Coast mistress.

Suicide? No more to tell?

Justice still for L.E.L.!

Accra and London, 1980.


I hope the new book does her justice.


This entry in an old edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography did not:

Update, 11 May, 2019

An Essay by Lucasta Miller in The Telegraph - a useful summary of the book:

Sex, secrets and scandals: the wild life of Letitia Landon, 'the female Byron'

The less sensational headline in the print edition: "Whatever happened to the 'female Byron?'

  Portrait by Henry William Pickersgill, Sunday Times Culture Magazine

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (Mrs Maclean), National Portrait Gallery

Another portrait (NPG)


A further portrait (NPG)


The first Instapoet: How Letitia Elizabeth Landon sold her image and bought poetic fame, New Statesman.


My own edition:

Update: BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week


Update: BBC Radio 3, Private Passions, Lucasta Miller


Corfu by L.E.L.


Corfu (2) by L.E.L