At the peak of her career Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the "angel muse" of British poetry in the 1820s and 1830s, was a conspicuous figure in London literary circles. Her novels and books of poetry went through edition after edition; she edited and contributed to the immensely popular annuals; and she was a literary critic for the influential Literary Gazette. The fame of L. E. L., as she was best known to her large reading public, is demonstrated not only by the large sales of her books but also by the suggestion of critics of her day that she was a serious contender to fill the poetic gap left by the deaths of Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and George Gordon, Lord Byron. Yet now Landon's work is excluded from anthologies and generally forgotten by students of British literature, unless her reputation among her contemporaries is singled out-as Sir...