Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38,) who published with her initials ‘L.E.L.,’ was an English poet and novelist. She is remembered not only for her high-spirited social life and her mysterious death but also for her verses about passionate love that reveal her lively intelligence and emotional intensity.
Born in London, Landon attended school in Chelsea. Publishing from an early age under her initials ‘L.E.L.’ allowed her to assume the literary persona of an innocent, gentle, and devoted but rejected female lover.
Landon began contributing to Literary Gazette and various Christmas annuals. Her first volume of verse was The Fate of Adelaide (1821.) Capitalizing on her periodical success, Landon’s second volume of verse The Improvisatrice (1824) went through six editions in a year. A steady stream of further volumes ensued, including The Troubadour (1825,) The Golden Violet (1826,) The Venetian Bracelet (1829,) The Vow of the Peacock (1835,) a collection of children’s stories, and Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836.)
Landon captivated London society by her wayward charm. Her works were extremely popular, and she was in great demand as a contributor to magazines and ladies’ gift books and annuals. Her novels included Romance and Reality (1831,) Francesca Carrera (1834,) and Ethel Churchill (1837.)
Landon married George Maclean, then chief administrator of the Cape Coast settlement, present-day Ghana. After arriving in Africa, Landon died in mysterious circumstances from swallowing prussic acid, by either suicide or accident.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Disappointment
It is very pleasant to follow one’s inclinations; but unfortunately, we cannot follow them all: they are like the teeth sown by Cadmus—they spring up, get in each other’s way, and fight.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Ah tell me not that memory sheds gladness over the past; what is recalled by faded flowers save that they did not last?
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Remembrance
What mockeries are our most firm resolves.—To will is ours, but not to execute. We map our future like some unknown coast, and say here is a harbor, there a rock; the one we will attain, the other shun, and we do neither; some chance gale springs up, and bears us far o’er some unfathomed sea.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is in life no blessing like affection; it soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues, and bringeth down to earth its native heaven: life has nought else that may supply its place.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Affection
Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Enjoyment
Circumstances form the character; but like petrifying waters they harden while they form.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings. We pity, but do not enter into the grief which we have never felt.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Sympathy
Few save the poor feel for the poor.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Poverty
An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Quotations, Light
Half our forebodings of our neighbors, are but our wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas, we make a ladder of our thoughts, where angels step, but sleep ourselves at the foot; our high resolves look down upon our slumbering acts.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Thought
We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Music
Hope is love’s happiness, but not its life.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Hope
The pride of blood has a most important and beneficial influence.—It is much to feel that the high and honorable belong to a name that is pledged to the present by the recollections of the past.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Ancestry
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Future, The Future
Occupation is one great source of enjoyment. No man, properly occupied, was ever miserable.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Employment
Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears, but cannot trace their source. Is it the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul’s strong instinct of another world like music?
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Music
It is said that ridicule is the test of truth; but it is never applied except when we wish to deceive ourselves—when if we cannot exclude the light, we would fain draw the curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be, that wishes to take refuge in doubt.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The lover and physician are both popular from the same cause. We talk to them only of ourselves. That, I daresay, was the origin of confession—egotism under the name of religion.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Talking
The retrospect of youth is often like visiting the grave of a friend whom we have injured, and are prevented by his death from the possibility of making reparation.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Youth
I frankly confess I have a respect for family pride.—If it be a prejudice, it is prejudice in its most picturesque shape.—But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Pride
Who can confess his poverty and look it in the face, destroys its sting: but a proud poor man, he is poor, indeed.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Poverty
Half the noblest passages in poetry are truisms; but these truisms are the great truths of humanity; and he is the true poet who draws them from their fountains in elemental purity, and gives us to drink.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We speak of hope; but is not hope only a more gentle name for fear.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Hope
Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Praise
The heart’s hushed secret in the soft dark eye.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
If there be any one habit which more than another is the dry rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Habits are the petrefaction of feelings.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Habit
I have no parting sigh to give, so take my parting smile.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu English Aristocrat, Poet
Pamela Hansford Johnson English Novelist
Anne Bradstreet American Poet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning English Poet
Christina Rossetti English Poet
Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
Jane Austen English Novelist
Mary Webb English Novelist
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton British Author, Politician
Philip Larkin English Poet