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A review by wollstonecrafty
L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron by Lucasta Miller
while I assume all biographers indicate this nowadays, I do respect lucasta miller for framing [b:L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "female Byron"|40594383|L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "female Byron"|Lucasta Miller|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549400569l/40594383._SX50_.jpg|63041660] primarily around the issue of biographical and generic ambiguity. between L.E.L. the writer and Letitia the person, the Romantic and Victorian literary periods, irony and sincerity, miller imbues all with virtual scare quotes. since I've worked on m. shelley's work during this waning period of the Young Romantics (tm tm tm taylor swift), it was fascinating to see the hallmarks of that period (wild print culture, annuals, cynicism/reactionary instincts) shape L.E.L.'s career as well. my one bone: by reading and delineating this period (20s/30s) as ambiguous/shifting/messy, she did have to almost universally claim that victorian bourgeois repression culture was dominant, which i'm sure many academics/victorianists would dispute. I think it was smart to keep it mostly focused on victorian literary culture, about which it's much more believable to make quasi universal statements.
as (essentially) pop history and a book ostensibly about one figure, I read carefully and somewhat suspiciously as to how miller does close reading, but found her analysis cogent. reviewers who think she's "reading into it too much," I ask: why are you reading this? do I really have to make the argument that close reading requires and rewards effort? instead i'd recommend you direct criticism at the few times she makes claims (not about the texts) that aren't as sound i.e. one notable passage when she claims v. woolf "must have known" about L.E.L's complicated truth. overall for popular history/biography, it was at once eminently readable but also stacked with enough literary analysis for me to trust it.
starting a narrative with a person's death is cliche by now, but because of it i did move through the book with a bittersweet affective sense of predestination. it's also sad to proudly emblazon your heroine as the "female byron" and then show how permanently damaging that very reputation was for her (while real byron just got to fuck off and die in greece).
as (essentially) pop history and a book ostensibly about one figure, I read carefully and somewhat suspiciously as to how miller does close reading, but found her analysis cogent. reviewers who think she's "reading into it too much," I ask: why are you reading this? do I really have to make the argument that close reading requires and rewards effort? instead i'd recommend you direct criticism at the few times she makes claims (not about the texts) that aren't as sound i.e. one notable passage when she claims v. woolf "must have known" about L.E.L's complicated truth. overall for popular history/biography, it was at once eminently readable but also stacked with enough literary analysis for me to trust it.
starting a narrative with a person's death is cliche by now, but because of it i did move through the book with a bittersweet affective sense of predestination. it's also sad to proudly emblazon your heroine as the "female byron" and then show how permanently damaging that very reputation was for her (while real byron just got to fuck off and die in greece).