L. E. L.

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Standard Name: L. E. L.
Birth Name: Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Pseudonym: L.
Pseudonym: L. E. L.
Used Form: LEL
Used Form: L.E.L.
LEL was one of the most prolific and popular authors of her day. She produced an immense corpus of poetry, several works of fiction (the first a particularly striking silver fork novel), and considerable review and editorial work. Her work more than any other popularized the persona of the lovelorn, doomed poetess in the early nineteenth century.
Black and white photograph of a three-quarter length drawing of L.E.L. in chalk and pencil by Daniel Maclise, early 1830s. She is wearing a white dress whose wasp waist is accentuated by a broad belt, large billowing skirt and upper sleeves, and high standaway collar. Her dark, shining hair is centre-parted and pulled back, with tiny kiss-curls below and a tall, plaited arrangement above. Her expression is languishing. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Camilla Crosland
Since she was well-connected in London literary circles, she was able to include in her memoir recollections of time spent working with the annuals and of literary figures such as Grace Aguilar , Lady Blessington
Textual Production Sarah Stickney Ellis
SSE edited Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrapbook at some point following LEL 's death in 1838. In this she voiced her own admiration of Elizabeth Fry , as well as contributing much of the verse for the years 1843-45.
Landow, George P., editor. Victorian Research Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/.
Boyle, Andrew. An Index to the Annuals. Andrew Boyle.
88
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Katharine Elwood
Some of the British women writers discussed in the text remain well-known, but others have slipped into obscurity. Memoirs includes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Griselda Murray , Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford , Hester Lynch Piozzi
Family and Intimate relationships Violet Fane
VF 's love life was a frequent subject of London gossip. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she was regarded, in her own time, as a late-Victorian Letitia Landon .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Apart from...
Textual Production Catherine Fanshawe
The letters that CF sent to Anne Grant are not extant, but Grant's side of the correspondence leaves no doubt that the two were in constant dialogue about new books they had read, and their...
Family and Intimate relationships John Forster
In 1834 JF became engaged to the popular poet L.E.L . Their nuptials were soon called off by L.E.L when rumours that she had had an affair with William Jerdan resurfaced. Forster pressed for a...
Friends, Associates Catherine Gore
CG was acquainted with a number of important literary figures. Before leaving London for the Continent she attended an assembly given by Rosina Bulwer-Lytton to which Disraeli , Lady Morgan , and Letitia Landon also...
Education Frances Ridley Havergal
FRH was an avid reader within limits: her selection of material was mostly dictated by her religious interests. After receiving a copy of a book about literary women she commented, The sad sketch of L. E. L.
Literary responses Ann Hawkshaw
In a review for the Athenæum, George Walter Thornbury stated abruptly that AH 's collection has at least two merits,—it has no Preface and it has a purpose. Finding that the sonnets do not...
Intertextuality and Influence Felicia Hemans
The volume takes its epigraphs and historical starting-points from a wide range of sources, including major male Romantics—Wordsworth , Byron , Coleridge , Goethe , Schiller —and lesser-known contemporaries including women—Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Intertextuality and Influence Felicia Hemans
Some of the poems in Records of Woman have recently been embraced by certain scholars (including Isobel Armstrong in Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, who discusses them alongside poems by L. E. L.
Reception Felicia Hemans
FH 's circulation in her lifetime rivalled that of her most prominent male contemporaries. With sales of about 18,000 volumes, she outsold Coleridge and Wordsworth , if not Scott and Byron . She proved, as...
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
Maria Jane Jewsbury had already begun the idealisation of FH in 1830 with her portrait of Egeria in The History of a Nonchalant: a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman—the Italy...
Publishing Isabel Hill
Bentley had already offered the translation job to three or four other writers. After Hill completed her work she learned that L. E. L had rendered Corinne's odes into English. In the end L.E.L's translations...
Anthologization Barbara Hofland
BH seems to have remained saleable for a long time, since The Gift of Friendship . . . with contributions by . . . Mrs. Hofland appeared as late as 1877. Others included were Mary Howitt

Timeline

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Texts

L. E. L.,. The Vow of the Peacock. Editor Sypher, Francis Jacques, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1997.
L. E. L.,. The Works of L.E. Landon. E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838.
L. E. L., and Emma Roberts. The Zenana. Fisher, 1839.
L. E. L.,. Traits and Trials of Early Life. H. Colburn, 1836.
Hill, Isabel et al. “Translator’s Preface; Madame de Staël”. Corinne; or, Italy, translated by. Isabel Hill and L. E. L., A. L. Burt, 1857, p. iii - iv; v-xxi.