4                                        F. J. Sypher

early work possesses fluency, the sentimental themes and exotic
settings seem more like imitations of prevailing literary fashions
than like expressions of a distinctive poetic point of view. Yet it was
necessarily on early poems of transitory value that her fame chiefly
rested, at first. Furthermore, many of L.E.L.'s verse narratives and
lyrics were designed to ornament the literary annuals and gift books
which flourished in the 18 20s and 18 3 Os, but as these volumes went
out of style, writers like her, whose productions had been shaped by
and composed for this medium and its audience, also suffered a
decline in reputation.

In the 18 30s L.E.L. tried to adapt to the changing literary climate
by turning to prose fiction. But her work could not, and cannot,
compete with the variety of scene and ingenuity of plot served up
by the energetic genius of, say, her friend Ned Bulwer, not to
mention Dickens and others. Nevertheless, L.E.L.'s three-deckers,
with their faithful presentation of social milieu, sharply phrased
conversations, and penetrating emotional analysis, possess
enduring interest.

Although L.E.L.'s accomplishments have been overshadowed by
those of her great contemporaries, she has never been forgotten: in
England, her poems were still being reprinted many years after her
death, and important editions appeared in the United States too.
More recently, biographers such as D. E. Enfield (1928) and Helen
Ashton (1951) have been inspired by the romantic interest of
L.E.L.'s personal history. After years of supporting herself and her
relatives on the income from her literary efforts, in 18 38 she
married George Maclean, governor of the British post at Cape
Coast, West Africa (in present-day Ghana). Soon after their
marriage, she left the fashionable London scene and with her
husband sailed down to take up residence in a grim old trading fort
of a kind that is seen all along the "Guinea" coast. In the prison-like
setting of Cape Coast Castle, with its lonely, isolated situation and
its gruesome memories of the slave trade, L.E.L. died, like a
character in one of her own fictional imaginings, or forebodings, on
October 15, 1838, at the age of thirty-six, only two months after