Edgar Allen Poe read her Novels. John Greenleaf Whittier & Nathaniel Hawthorne certainly read them & her Poetry, as well.
Her works were translated into Foreign-Languages & spread across Europe, from Paris to Petersburg. She was also widely read in the British-Isles & across the wide waters in America.
Ordinary Americans—not just the Literary-Greats—read her novels & loved her poems.
But, today, almost no one remembers—much less reads the works of—Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
Fortunately, someone over at the Grolier Club cares.
The current exhibition centers on Landon’s wide-ranging career, with Manuscripts, First-Editions, Photos, Letters, & other Memorabilia to illuminate this Forgotten-Life & Talent.
In the Age of Twitter, who reads Three-Volume-Novels anymore?
Yet, in Landon’s time, her Romance & Reality was a hot-item at the bookstores. As were its successors, Francesca Carrara & Ethel Churchill.
They were fine exemplars of Georgian/Victorian-Fiction: Georgian, because King George IV was still on the Throne, soon to be followed by Princess Victoria.
Landon’s Career was cut-off abruptly in 1838. She’d just married a British-Colonial-Officer, posted off to West-Africa, in what’s now Ghana. There, she suddenly died, aged 38.