L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron," Lucasta Miller, c. 2019.

L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron," Lucasta Miller, c. 2019.

I do not know why this was a difficult book for me to read. I started it twice, never getting past the second or third chapter. I guess the third time was the charm. I then went back through it a fourth time taking notes.

Biography: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 1802 - 1838

Setting:

• London, Paris, and West Africa
• 1802 - 1838
• literary period following the Regency Era and preceding the Victorian Era

Genre:

• history of British literature

Literary periods:

• Georgian Era: Kings George I - V
• Regency Era, 1795 - 1837
• "the strange pause"
• Victorian Era

The "strange pause," the lost literary generation, some markers:

• L.E.L. spanned the 1820s and 1830s, coincided exactly with the "strange pause"
• the troublesome transition phase between the deaths of byronshelleyandkeats and the rise of Dickens
• post-Byronic
• Jane Austen: 1775 - 1817
• Abolition Act of 1807 (British)
• Regency Era: distinctive trends in British architecgture, literature, fashions, politics, culture
• culture of the Regency Era: demi-connaissance
• half-knowledge: high society tacitly condoned illicit sexual relationships

Subjects covered in the book:

• literary period between the Romantics and the Victorians
• demi-connaissance
• Abolition Act of 1807, the between between that act and the US Civil War
• the history of West Africa, the Gold Coast, Ghana
• fashion during this period
• portraits, painting, actresses
• bohemian lifestyle of the poor side of London
• offspring of illicit relationships

I had trouble following the story at times. I was not exactly sure why I had difficulty. It helped to summarize the books by "years." It only covers a few years so it was easy to do.

One of the reasons I may have had difficulty with the book may have had to do with the fact I knew nothing about the subject matter (L.E.L.) prior to reading the book, and more importantly, I've never really understood the phenomenon of byronshelleyandkeats.

It also helped immensely when I "drew" a type of Venn diagram to understand the "characters" in L.E.L.'s life: