Manuscript short story titled 'Helen' by Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838)

Six-page short story titled ‘Helen’ and beginning with a quote by L.E.L. [Letitia Elizabeth Landon].

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. She was born on 14 August 1802, the eldest child of John Landon and Catherine Bishop, Letitia lived most of her life in various London locations. She initially wrote poems for the Literary Gazette under her full name, but eventually resorted to using the pseudonym ‘L.E.L.’ and also moved into writing romance novels and short stories. She married the colonial administrator George Maclean in a private ceremony on 7 June 1838. She was found dead in her room in Cape Coast Castle in modern-day Ghana, on 15 October 1838, aged 36, apparently slumped against the door with an empty bottle of prussic acid in her hand. Her death attracted a lot of rumour and sepeculation, although it is suspected that she probably died of a heart attack,

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/15978 accessed October 2021; https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37719 accessed November 2021.

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Papers arranged and described by Mark Williams, October 2021, in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; and in-house cataloguing guidelines.

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Formerly catalogued as LAdd/6067