Miranda Seymour
A Songbird in Knightsbridge
L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated ‘Female Byron’
By Lucasta Miller
Jonathan Cape 401pp £25 order from our bookshop
In October 1838, four months after Victoria’s coronation, shocking news filtered back to England from West Africa. Letitia Landon, once hailed as Byron’s poetic heir, was dead. The empty bottle of prussic acid clasped in her hand pointed to suicide. A sense of self-preservation prompted Dr Anthony Thomson, the bottle’s supplier, to suggest murder. Wasn’t it a fact (Thomson loudly whispered to the press) that George Maclean, Landon’s husband of eight weeks, in order to marry her had cast aside a previous consort, a woman in whose veins ran ‘the hot blood of Africa’?
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'We may not be able to shield ourselves from irrational passions such as hatred, anger, envy, mockery and pride, or from the buffetings of circumstance, but we can rise above them by obtaining insight into their nature and their causes.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-poetry-of-reason
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter
'Some Labour MPs who were shocked by Corbyn’s rise behaved appallingly ... Not only were they disloyal; they also had no coherent strategy for removing Corbyn or an alternative left-of-centre project.'
@steverichards14 https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-accidental-leader