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L.E.L. by Lucasta Miller
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L.E.L.

The Lost Life and Mysterious Death of the "Female Byron"

The Lost Life and Mysterious Death of the "Female Byron"

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

By Lucasta Miller

By Lucasta Miller

By Lucasta Miller

By Lucasta Miller

By Lucasta Miller
Read by Elizabeth Jasicki

By Lucasta Miller
Read by Elizabeth Jasicki

Best Seller
Paperback $20.00

Oct 20, 2020 | ISBN 9780593311158

Ebook $10.99

Mar 05, 2019 | ISBN 9780525655350

Audiobook Download $22.50

Mar 05, 2019 | 865 Minutes

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    L.E.L. by Lucasta Miller
    Paperback $20.00
    Oct 20, 2020 | ISBN 9780593311158

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    • $20.00

      Oct 20, 2020 | ISBN 9780593311158

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • Mar 05, 2019 | ISBN 9780525655350

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    • Mar 05, 2019 | ISBN 9780593103586

      865 Minutes

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    About L.E.L.

    A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography: the fascinating, rediscovered story of a writer who changed English poetry and explored the dark side of sexuality through a woman’s voice.

    On October 15, 1838, the body of a thirty-six-year-old woman was found in Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, a bottle of Prussic acid in her hand. She was one of the most famous English poets of her day: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, known as L.E.L. What was she doing in Africa? Was her death an accident, as the inquest claimed? Or had she committed suicide, or even been murdered? To her contemporaries, she was an icon, hailed as the “female Byron,” admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Brontës, and Edgar Allan Poe. However, she was also a woman with scandalous secrets, and her death prompted a cover-up that is only now unravelling. Lucasta Miller, acclaimed author of The Brontë Myth, meticulously pieces together L.E.L.’s lost career, revealing her as a brilliant woman who embodied a seismic cultural shift, the missing link between the Romantics and the Victorians. A triumph of original research and riveting storytelling, L.E.L. restores a fascinating figure to her place in history.

    About L.E.L.

    A lost nineteenth-century literary life, brilliantly rediscovered–Letitia Elizabeth Landon, hailed as the female Byron; she changed English poetry; her novels, short stories, and criticism, like Byron though in a woman’s voice, explored the dark side of sexuality–by the acclaimed author of The Brontë Myth (“wonderfully entertaining . . . spellbinding”–New York Times Book Review; “ingenious”–The New Yorker).

    “None among us dares to say / What none will choose to hear”–L.E.L., “Lines of Life”
         Letitita Elizabeth Landon–pen name L.E.L.–dared to say it and made sure she was heard.
         Hers was a life lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London’s 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron’s came to an end.
         Lucasta Miller tells the full story and re-creates the literary London of her time. She was born in 1802 and was shaped by the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a time of conservatism when values were in flux. She began publishing poetry in her teens and came to be known as a daring poet of thwarted romantic love. We see L.E.L. as an emblematic figure who embodied a seismic cultural shift, the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. Miller writes of Jane Eyre as the direct connection to L.E.L.–its first-person confessional voice, its Gothic extremes, its love triangle, and in its emphasis on sadomasochistic romantic passion.

    About L.E.L.

    A lost nineteenth-century literary life, brilliantly rediscovered–Letitia Elizabeth Landon, hailed as the female Byron; she changed English poetry; her novels, short stories, and criticism, like Byron though in a woman’s voice, explored the dark side of sexuality–by the acclaimed author of The Brontë Myth (“wonderfully entertaining . . . spellbinding”–New York Times Book Review; “ingenious”–The New Yorker).

    “None among us dares to say / What none will choose to hear”–L.E.L., “Lines of Life”
         Letitita Elizabeth Landon–pen name L.E.L.–dared to say it and made sure she was heard.
         Hers was a life lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London’s 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron’s came to an end.
         Lucasta Miller tells the full story and re-creates the literary London of her time. She was born in 1802 and was shaped by the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a time of conservatism when values were in flux. She began publishing poetry in her teens and came to be known as a daring poet of thwarted romantic love. We see L.E.L. as an emblematic figure who embodied a seismic cultural shift, the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. Miller writes of Jane Eyre as the direct connection to L.E.L.–its first-person confessional voice, its Gothic extremes, its love triangle, and in its emphasis on sadomasochistic romantic passion.

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    About Lucasta Miller

    Dr. Lucasta Miller is a British critic and historian who has lectured and broadcast widely on 19th-century literature. Her influential afterlife study, The Bronte Myth, first published in 2001, was reissued in a new edition in 2020; her pioneering biography of the ‘female… More about Lucasta Miller

    About Lucasta Miller

    Dr. Lucasta Miller is a British critic and historian who has lectured and broadcast widely on 19th-century literature. Her influential afterlife study, The Bronte Myth, first published in 2001, was reissued in a new edition in 2020; her pioneering biography of the ‘female… More about Lucasta Miller

    About Lucasta Miller

    Dr. Lucasta Miller is a British critic and historian who has lectured and broadcast widely on 19th-century literature. Her influential afterlife study, The Bronte Myth, first published in 2001, was reissued in a new edition in 2020; her pioneering biography of the ‘female… More about Lucasta Miller

    Product Details

    Category: Arts & Entertainment Biographies & Memoirs | Literary Figure Biographies & Memoirs | History | Poetry | Literary Criticism

    Paperback | $20.00
    Published by Anchor
    Oct 20, 2020 | 432 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780593311158

    Category: Arts & Entertainment Biographies & Memoirs | Literary Figure Biographies & Memoirs | History | Poetry | Literary Criticism

    Ebook | $10.99
    Published by Anchor
    Mar 05, 2019 | 416 Pages | ISBN 9780525655350

    Category: Arts & Entertainment Biographies & Memoirs | Literary Figure Biographies & Memoirs | History | Poetry | Literary Criticism | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $22.50
    Published by Random House Audio
    Mar 05, 2019 | 865 Minutes | ISBN 9780593103586

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    Praise

    A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    “Compelling as a detective story. . . . A masterpiece of eloquent scholarship.” —Literary Review
     
    “A valiant recovery job—the life of a writer, a woman first celebrated, then notorious, in her time and nearly forgotten today. . . . Infinitely rich.” —The Wall Street Journal
     
    “Miller’s stellar research blows two centuries of accumulated dust off a phenomenon worth knowing. . . . This book takes biography to a new level.” —New Statesman
     
    “A luminous and engaging literary mystery supported by thoughtful and exhaustive research.” —Bustle
     
    “Few figures of the Romantic era are as enigmatic. . . . This intrepid biography examines her eclipse in light of a scandal. . . . Miller’s subtle readings of a poet whom she calls ‘proto-postmodern’ restore a lost reputation.” —The New Yorker
     
    “L.E.L. is the first biography of Landon to explore recent revelations about her life, and the literary critic Lucasta Miller’s sleuthing delivers an unexpected result. The figure who emerges from her pages is not just a missing link in literary Romanticism, but a progenitor of something modern.” —The Atlantic

    Awards

    National Book Critics Circle Awards FINALIST 2019

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