Original ideas, sheer beauty of her poetry in all its many diverse forms.

Glowing purity and nature of her first poems, more sustained thoughtfulness and vigour of her later works.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, better known to the public as L.E.L., and also known as Mrs. Maclean, was born on 14 August 1802, London, England. Descended from an ancient and highly respectable family, settled at one time at Crednall, in Herefordshire.  Letitia Elizabeth Landon was one of the most celebrated writers of her time. Yet little is currently known of her private life, much of her work remains uncollected, misrepresented, and undervalued. Hence, her place in literary history is still undetermined.  

When she came to the attention of a neighbor, William Jerdan, who was the editor of the Literary Gazette, L.E.L. was 14 or 15 years old, and bookish, having heard, read, and written stories and poems from early childhood. When L.E.L. was 17, her mother showed some of her poems to Jerdan, who returned them with comments. L.E.L. or her relations subsequently returned them to him, revised; and her poem Rome appeared in The Literary Gazette  followed by others, though not until Jerdan had convinced himself "of their being in truth from the girlish L.E.L".

L.E.L.`s poetry is characteristically about artifice and artificial narratives, and not about language per se. Though readers from her lifetime to now sometimes miss the point, her works are not about the experiences and feelings of the narrated characters; they are about the narration of those feelings and experiences. L.E.L. writes poems about tales of love, but she does not write tales of love.