The eldest of three children, Letitia Elizabeth Landon was born in Chelsea, London to Catherine and John, a midshipman who, on retirement, became a partner in the army agent Adair’s and Co. The family moved to Trevor Park, a country house in East Barnet, when she was five years old, but reduced circumstances owing to the end of the war and economic difficulties forced the family to return to Fulham, London in 1815, and then to Old Brompton in 1816. Landon showed great promise at an early age, with a prodigious appetite for books and writing, and the move to Old Brompton also brought her a powerful mentor, William Jerdan, the editor of the popular Literary Gazette. He began to publish her poetry, starting with ‘Rome’, on 11 March 1820, signed simply with the initial L. In August 1821, with the financial assistance of her grandmother, she published The Fate of Adelaide: a Swiss Tale of Romance; and other Poems under her full name, but despite favourable notices, the volume did not attract much public attention. Undaunted, she continued to publish in the Literary Gazette, now under the teasingly anonymous initials L. E. L., and Jerdan, who had several children by Landon, appointed her to the powerful position of chief reviewer. Carefully cultivating a fascinating image and gaining in literary fame, Landon intrigued her growing readership.
The Improvisatrice, and other Poems (1824) went into six editions, and her Byronic style attracted the public through its performative self‐fashioning. Landon became a highly sought‐after poet whose improvisatorial method lent itself to the rapid production of accomplished poetry. However, her father’s death in late 1824 led her, like Felicia Hemans and Charlotte Smith, to write to support her remaining family as she contributed to her brother’s education and her mother’s living. A rift between mother and daughter led Landon to move in with her grandmother in 1825, but following her grandmother’s death, she moved into a room in Miss Lance’s school for girls. However, this ‘unusual independence cost the young L. E. L. dear, both in literary “drudgery” and eventually in reputation’.1 Soon, scurrilous rumours began to circulate, particularly about Landon’s relationship with three men: William Jerdan, William Maginn, and Edward Bulwer‐Lytton. Landon was devastated by these attacks on her character, dismissing the rumours as cruel speculation about an impoverished female writer. The press enjoyed giving vent to such gossip even as Landon produced a tremendous amount of poetry and general writing for annuals and journals, with the annuals offering highly lucrative remuneration for authors.
Landon’s remarkable pace of work meant she published several volumes of poetry in quick succession – The Troubadour (1825), The Golden Violet (1826), The Venetian Bracelet (1829), The Easter Gift (1832), and The Vow of the Peacock (1835) – but none achieved the sensation of The Improvisatrice, and other Poems. Landon also published novels, Romance and Reality (1831), Francesca Carrera (1834), and Ethel Churchill (1837), which were very different from the poetry and reveal Landon as developing a sardonic voice for her social commentary. In 1834 her engagement with John Forster was broken off because of rumours about her romantic entanglements, and her waning fame made her anxious to find domestic happiness. When she met Captain George McLean, Governor of the Cape Coast Castle in West Africa (now Ghana), in 1837, they quickly became engaged, and married on 7 June 1838. Only two months later, Landon was found dead in Africa with an empty bottle of prussic acid close to hand. Though the doctor declared it an accidental death, biographers remain uncertain as to whether her demise at thirty‐six was the result of suicide or misadventure. Her early and mysterious death meant that Landon’s notoriety continued beyond the grave, and her story became a cautionary tale of the lot of female poets. But Landon’s poetic achievement was far more considerable. Her arch and intelligently seductive poetry deserves the reconsideration it has recently begun to receive.
Glennis Byron, ‘Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802–1838)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, September 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15978, accessed 16 April 2015]; Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15978; Alison Chapman, ‘Laetitia Landon’, The Literary Encyclopedia, first published 18 July 2002 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5142, accessed 9 April 2015].