Forget-Me-Not Hemans and Landon

Landon and Hemans

The Victorian Poetess The Victorian Poetess, written by Susan Brown is a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry that explores the influential, as well as contradictory, understandings of the Victorian poetess, as informed by "a commodified aestheticism that frequently conflates the woman poet's body with her literary corpus."  Brown suggests that the major problem that faced women writers was that they were seen as the poetry; "they live and inspire it but they do not write it."  <http://www.nines.org/exhibits/The_Victorian_Poetess>

Qualities of the Poetess Writes about ‘womens’ issues’ Sentimental Role of the poet modest in comparison to male poets Supports Victorian domestic ideology Love a major topic Often patriotic The term became derogatory eventually, implying that female poetry was inferior to male.

Edgar Allan Poe "the death... of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." <http://www.nines.org/exhibits/The_Victorian_Poetess>

The Westminster Review, 7 (January 1827): 50-67 ‘L.E.L.'s poems are, for the most part, metrical romances; generally sentimental descriptions of sentimental loves: it is nothing wonderful, therefore, that they have attracted the admiration of her female readers. Love is the great business of a woman's life; and any one who discourses with but ordinary ability on this all-important topic, finds in a woman a ready, patient, and admiring listener. . . . L.E.L. has acquired a degree of fame by writing on love, which she by no means deserves.’

Anne K. Mellor "the literary tradition of the female poet is explicitly political; it self-consciously and insistently occupies the public sphere.” "The Female Poet and the Poetess: Two Traditions of British Women's Poetry, 1780-1830." Studies in Romanticism 36.2 (1997): 261-276; p. 262. What is the nature of female poetic power?

Letitia Landon She began to sign poems published in the Literary Gazette as L.E.L ‘the use of these intriguing initials was a clever marketing ploy: Landon was already packaging herself for consumption by what was soon to become a large and enthusiastic following’ Letitia Landon: The Woman Behind L.E.L. Glennis Stephenson Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995 p. 25.

Letitia Landon ‘Behind the romantic and melancholy poetess there was an astute businesswoman with a pressing need to make a living and a keen sense of the literary market. And while Landon was certainly complicit in the construction of her conventional self, she also fretted under the restrictions imposed upon her and frequently took the opportunity to subvert the very limitations with which she appeared to comply’ Stephenson 4.

L.E.L. Landon ‘quickly became a commodity in the booming market for women’s sentimental verse’ Yopie Prins Victorian Sappho p. 191