An agricultural depression meant that the Landon family moved back to London in 1815. There John Landon made the acquaintance of William Jerdan, editor of "The Literary Gazette". According to Mrs A. T. Thomson, Jerdan took notice of the young Letitia Landon when he saw her coming down the street, "trundling a hoop with one hand, and holding in the other a book of poems, of which she was catching a glimpse between the agitating course of her evolutions". Jerdan later described her ideas as "original and extraordinary". He encouraged Landon's poetic endeavours, and her first poem was published under the single initial "L" in the "Gazette" in 1820, when Landon was 18. The following year, with financial support from her grandmother, Landon published a book of poetry, "The Fate of Adelaide", under her full name. The book met with little critical notice, but sold well; Landon, however, received no profits, since the publisher shortly went out of business. The same month that "The Fate of Adelaide" appeared, Landon published two poems under the initials "L.E.L." in the "Gazette;" these poems, and the initials under which they were published, attracted much discussion and speculation. As contemporary critic Laman Blanchard put it, the initials L.E.L. "speedily became a signature of magical interest and curiosity". Bulwer Lytton wrote that, as a young college student, he and his classmates would