Lucasta Miller L.E.I. The Lost Life And Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Summary: Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lucasta Miller, author of L.E.L.; The Lost Life And Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Celebrated “Female Byron”. Lucasta is a British critic, biographer and editor. She is the author of The Bronte Myth. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Economist and The Independent. She was also a visiting scholar and fellow at Oxford University. L.E.L. was published in March by Knopf. The subtitle of this book, The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” tells us a great deal about this woman, who today is largely forgotten to almost all of us, but in her time was a women and poet who made sure she was heard. She was scandalized, she was worshipped and some say, the most famous woman of her time. How strange I thought as reading, that I never heard of her. Her short life, she was born in 1802 and died in 1838. 36 years old. Close to the lifespans of Byron, Keats and Shelley. L.E.L.’s life was tucked into the Romantic Age of London in the 20s. She was on the rise as Byron’s life and poetry came to an end. This books tells her story in full and gives us a visual and literary look at the London of her time. Letitia was the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. As noted, this book gives us more than a glimpse of a time and place and the unusual life of a woman who without this work we would be unaware.