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L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron cover

L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron

Lucasta Miller

0

awards won

4

score

#2119 of 3,809 books · #750 in Biography & Memoir

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (2019).

On 15 October 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 by her initials 'L.E.L.' What was she doing in Africa? Was her death an accident? Had she committed suicide, or even been murdered? To her contemporaries, she was an icon, hailed as the 'female Byron'. However, she was also a woman with secrets, the mother of three illegitimate children whose existence was subsequently wiped from the record. After her death, she became the subject of a cover-up which this book unravels, excavating with it a whole lost literary culture.

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Publisher
Random House
ISBN-13
9781473571716
Topics
Victorian poet's life and deathLiterary scandal and secrecy19th-century literary culture

Other awarded books from Lucasta Miller

Lucasta Miller has no other awarded or shortlisted books yet.

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