Author: Landon, Letitia Elizabeth
Biography:
Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, later Maclean (1802-38: ODNB)
pseudonym L. E. L.
For a short time one of the most popular and influential of English Romantic poets, Landon was born in London, the eldest child of John and Catherine Jane (Bishop) Landon. At the time of her birth, the family was well-to-do, but their fortunes suffered successive losses and they came to rely on the daughter’s income as a writer. She went to school briefly in Chelsea but after 1809 was educated at home by her cousin. In 1816 her poems attracted the attention of a neighbour, William Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette, who began to publish her work in 1820. In 1821, Landon brought out her first collection under her own name, with financial assistance from her grandmother. About the same time, Jerdan introduced more of her poetry in the Gazette under the initials "L. E. L."--a pen-name that she used for the rest of her career. Jerdan became her mentor, her agent, her manager, and her lover. Although the official biography by L. Blanchard (1841) laboured to deny the rumours that had damaged Landon's reputation in England, modern scholars have discovered incontrovertible evidence that she had three children by Jerdan but attempted to keep their existence secret. Landon was an extraordinarily hard-working writer: besides the regular volumes of verse that she produced, there were contributions to periodicals and annuals; translations; novels; editions of the works of others; and many anonymous reviews. She was a friend to a few other literary women, notaby Emma Roberts (q.v.): the two lived together for a time and dedicated books to one another. In the 1830s she broke off an engagement to the newspaper editor John Forster, ostensibly because he had been indelicate enough to question her honesty. In 1838 she married George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle in West Africa, but two months later she was found dead in her room in the castle, holding an empty bottle of prussic acid. An inquest determined that she had died of an accidental overdose; she is buried under the parade ground there. (ODNB 26 Aug. 2019; Lucasta Miller, L. E. L. [2019])
Other Names:
- L. E. L.
- L. E. Landon
- Miss Landon
- E. Landon
- S. E. L.