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
Publishing Regina Maria Roche
The work bears a dedication, dated at London on 10 April 1828, to Princess Augusta Sophia .
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 671
In her preface RMR , unusually, says something about herself, and the financial and emotional problems...
Friends, Associates Emma Roberts
ER had become a great friend
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
of Letitia E. Landon during her researches at the British Museum. The two of them, along with Jane Webb (later Loudon) were as daughters . . . at all...
Dedications Emma Roberts
This work she dedicated to L. E. L. , as a faint tribute to her genius.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
It was reprinted in London two years later, with the final three words dropped from the title.
Textual Production Emma Roberts
ER contributed to women's literary history with a memoir of her friend L. E. L. for the latter's posthumous The Zenana, and Minor Poems, 1839.
Literary responses Emma Roberts
ER 's reputation stood high at her death, though it was subject to the ambivalence commonly met with by women writers at this period. The anonymous memoirist on her began by contradicting the barbarous opinion...
Reception Emma Roberts
At the same time the memoir seems concerned to defend ER against any hint of being interested in deep investigations or profound reflections, which it implies would have been culpably unfeminine. It quotes a Calcutta...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The Blackstick Papers treat a wide range of topics; three of the thirteen concern women writers, and the book's frontispiece is from a miniature of Felicia Hemans . ATR notes the stoicism
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Blackstick Papers. Books for Libraries Press.
146
of Mary Berry
Textual Features Mary Oxlie
The poem gives ten lines to humble self-deprecation, in iambic pentameter couplets: a metre which serves to separate this passage from the rest, since the remaining 42 lines, which praise Drummond 's descriptive powers, are...
Textual Features Caroline Norton
The verse narrative is written in rhyming couplets, sometimes in very regular pentameter and at others in quite irregular metre that reflects, for instance, the anguish of the speaker's musings on memory and death. Stylistically...
Fictionalization Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
For centuries LMWM has been interpreted and re-interpreted, judged less often as writer than as an exemplar of the unacceptable female. Her fame and/or notoriety flourished during her lifetime, and posthumous publications kept it alive...
Textual Production Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Marguerite Blessington issued her first number as editor of the Book of Beauty (an annual Christmas gift book, then in its second year); she succeeded L.E.L. in this post.
Adburgham, Alison. Women in Print: Writing Women and Women’s Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria. George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
249
Molloy, Joseph Fitzgerald. The Most Gorgeous Lady Blessington. Downey.
233
Health Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
She was under considerable financial pressure as a result not only of her large entertainments but of dependent family members, pensioned servants, and others whom she aided, including the mother of L.E.L. She wrote to...
Textual Features Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
In the plot, Jim is suspected in the murder of a policeman, but later becomes sensibly disillusioned with repeal. Grace improves her natural goodness by reading the Bible in an almost Protestant manner. She ministers...
Textual Features Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Critic Paula R. Feldman writes that she filled in the gaps in each literary annual with her own poetry or prose.
Feldman, Paula R., editor. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era. John Hopkins University Press.
150
In the Book of Beauty for 1839, for instance, Blessington contributed two poems...
Friends, Associates Jane Loudon
In London after her father's death, Jane Webb was a frequent visitor to the family of John Martin the artist. His wife, Susan Martin, had special motherly friendship for Jane, shared to some degree...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

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.