Opinions

Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)



He scorned them from the centre of his heart,
For well he knew mankind ; and he who knows
Must loathe or pity. He who dwells apart,
With books, and nature, and philosophy,
May lull himself with pity ; he who dwells
In crowds and cities, struggling with his race,
Must daily see their falsehood and their faults,
Their cold ingratitude, their selfishness :
How can he choose but loathe them ?
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on June 18, 2016

Modified on April 15, 2023

20 sec read
415

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABACDEFGH
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 390
Words 68
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 9

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet. Born 14th August 1802 at 25 Hans Place, Chelsea, she lived through the most productive period of her life nearby, at No.22. A precocious child with a natural gift for poetry, she was driven by the financial needs of her family to become a professional writer and thus a target for malicious gossip (although her three children by William Jerdan were successfully hidden from the public). In 1838, she married George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, whence she travelled, only to die a few months later (15th October) of a fatal heart condition. Behind her post-Romantic style of sentimentality lie preoccupations with art, decay and loss that give her poetry its characteristic intensity and in this vein she attempted to reinterpret some of the great male texts from a woman’s perspective. Her originality rapidly led to her being one of the most read authors of her day and her influence, commencing with Tennyson in England and Poe in America, was long-lasting. However, Victorian attitudes led to her poetry being misrepresented and she became excluded from the canon of English literature, where she belongs. more…

All Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems | Letitia Elizabeth Landon Books

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