Abstract
The popular lyric poet Letitia Landon, known as «LEL», died in October 1838, in the Cape Coast in west Africa, poisoned by the ingestion of hydrocyanic acid; she had married George Maclean, a British colonial governor, earlier the same year. The shock of Landon’s sudden death was compounded by its mysterious circumstances, quickly giving rise to rumours of suicide, murder, adultery, and cover-up. Landon’s first posthumous collection included a reassuring and almost certainly dishonest «Memoir» of the poet. The publication of The Zenana in 1839 fulfilled both a literary and a social need. The volume served to cool down the strong possibility of scandal in the circumstances around Landon’s death, to sanitize Landon’s reputation, and give her admiring public a final re-affirming taste of her exquisite work. This article interprets the «text» of Landon’s death in the light of new biographical work on Landon and Maclean, re-evaluation of poetry of the 1830s, and debates about the nature of modern elegy.
Original language | English |
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Journal | La Questione Romantica |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 23 Jan 2024 |
Keywords
- Landon, Letitia
- Romanticism
- Elegy
- Exile
- Scandal