Poetry, Fame and Scandal: The Cases of Byron and Landon

Explorations of romantic‐era literary celebrity have become increasingly popular in recent years. Byron, regarded by many as the first truly ‘modern’ literary celebrity, is often deployed as a key figure in these studies. However, rather than focussing entirely on Byron, in this article I compare aspects of his experiences of poetic celebrity with those of Letitia Elizabeth Landon. I argue that gender often plays a significant role in the way in which contemporary fame translates into posthumous reception. Both Landon and Byron died young, exiled (to a greater or lesser extent) from England. But while Byron becomes a hero in death and is incorporated wholeheartedly into the traditional romantic canon, Landon is imagined as a mythical victim of female poetic fame who cannot transcend the limitations of her problematic and scandalous body.