Spiders of society

摘要

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON was the Sappho of her age, a Scheherazade and a Becky Sharp. She wore many masks. Guileless ingenue. Poet of unspoken passions. Mistress to her editor. Wronged woman. A fly caught in gossip's web. A prolific (but impoverished) author of verse, fiction and literary hackwork. She wrote under her initials-"L.E.L."-with their echoes of "elle" and "hell". The poet Robert Southey had called Byron and Shelley "the Satanic school"; the infernal L.E.L. was its first female member. She called her poems "songs" as if they were composed not on the page, but on the lyre. "I have sung passionate songs of beating hearts," she wrote, "the fallen leaf, the faded flower, the broken heart, and the early grave."