Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Duke of Newcastle
Personal details
Born
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer[1]

(1803-05-25)25 May 1803
London, England
Died18 January 1873(1873-01-18) (aged 69)
Torquay, England
Political partyWhig (1831–1841)
Conservative (1851–1866)
Spouse
Rosina Doyle Wheeler
(m. 1827)
Children2, including Robert
Parent(s)William Earle Bulwer
Elizabeth Barbara Warburton-Lytton
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton,

King Otto abdicated. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.[1][2]

Bulwer-Lytton's works were well known in his time. He coined famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "dweller on the threshold", "the great unwashed", and the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." The sardonic Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually since 1982, claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels".[3][4][5][6]

Life

Bulwer was born on 25 May 1803 to General William Earle Bulwer of

Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth House, Hertfordshire. He had two older brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry (1801–1872), later Lord Dalling and Bulwer.[7]

His father died and his mother moved to London when he was four years old. When he was 15, a tutor named Wallington, who tutored him at Ealing, encouraged him to publish an immature work: Ishmael and Other Poems. Around this time, Bulwer fell in love, but the woman's father induced her to marry another man. She died about the time that Bulwer went to Cambridge and he stated that her loss affected all his subsequent life.[7]

In 1822 Bulwer-Lytton entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met John Auldjo, but soon moved to Trinity Hall. In 1825 he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse.[8] In the following year he took his BA degree and printed for private circulation a small volume of poems, Weeds and Wild Flowers.[7] He purchased an army commission in 1826, but sold it in 1829 without serving.[9]

Edward Bulwer-Lytton. His Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) was the source for Verdi's opera Aroldo.

In August 1827, he married

Rosina Doyle Wheeler (1802–1882), a noted Irish beauty, but against the wishes of his mother, who withdrew his allowance, forcing him to work for a living.[7] They had two children, Emily Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton (1828–1848), and (Edward) Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) who became Governor-General and Viceroy of British India (1876–1880). His writing and political work strained their marriage and his infidelity embittered Rosina.[10]

In 1833, they separated acrimoniously and in 1836 the separation became legal.[10] Three years later, Rosina published Cheveley, or the Man of Honour (1839), a near-libellous fiction satirising her husband's alleged hypocrisy.[10]

In June 1858, when her husband was standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she denounced him at the

hustings. He retaliated by threatening her publishers, withholding her allowance and denying her access to their children. Finally he had her committed to a mental asylum, but she was released a few weeks later after a public outcry.[10] This she chronicled in a memoir, A Blighted Life (1880).[11][12] She continued attacking her husband's character for several years.[13]

Bulwer-Lytton in later life

The death of Bulwer's mother in 1843 meant his "exhaustion of toil and study had been completed by great anxiety and grief," and by "about the January of 1844, I was thoroughly shattered."[14][15]

In his mother's room at Knebworth House, which he inherited, he "had inscribed above the mantelpiece a request that future generations preserve the room as his beloved mother had used it." It remains hardly changed to this day.[16]

On 20 February 1844, in accordance with his mother's will, he changed his surname from Bulwer to Bulwer-Lytton and assumed the arms of Lytton by royal licence.[13] His widowed mother had done the same in 1811. His brothers remained plain "Bulwer".[citation needed]

By chance, Bulwer-Lytton encountered a copy of "

Priessnitz, at Graefenberg" and, "making allowances for certain exaggerations therein", pondered the option of travelling to Graefenberg, but preferred to find something closer to home, with access to his own doctors in case of failure: "I who scarcely lived through a day without leech or potion!".[14][15] After reading a pamphlet by Doctor James Wilson, who operated a hydropathic establishment with James Manby Gully at Malvern, he stayed there for "some nine or ten weeks", after which he "continued the system some seven weeks longer under Doctor Weiss, at Petersham", then again at "Doctor Schmidt's magnificent hydropathic establishment at Boppart" (at the former Marienberg Convent at Boppard), after developing a cold and fever upon his return home.[14]

When

Otto, King of Greece abdicated in 1862, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the Greek Crown, but declined.[17]

The English

Fulham Football Club, he once resided in the original Craven Cottage, today the site of their stadium.[citation needed
]

Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered from a disease of the ear, and for the last two or three years of his life lived in Torquay nursing his health.[19] After an operation to cure deafness, an abscess formed in the ear and burst; he endured intense pain for a week and died at 2 am on 18 January 1873, just short of his 70th birthday.[19] The cause of death was unclear but it was thought the infection had affected his brain and caused a fit.[19] Rosina outlived him by nine years. Against his wishes, Bulwer-Lytton was honoured with a burial in Westminster Abbey.[20] His unfinished history Athens: Its Rise and Fall was published posthumously.[citation needed]

Political career

Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1870

Bulwer began his political career as a follower of

Admiralty, which he declined as likely to interfere with his activity as an author.[13]

Bulwer was created a

Baronetage of the United Kingdom, in 1838.[22] In 1841, he left Parliament and spent much of his time in travel.[13] He did not return to politics until 1852, when, having differed from Lord John Russell over the Corn Laws, he stood for Hertfordshire as a Conservative. Bulwer-Lytton held that seat until 1866, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in the County of Hertford. In 1858, he entered Lord Derby's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies, thus serving alongside his old friend Benjamin Disraeli. He was comparatively inactive in the House of Lords.[13]

"Just prior to his government's defeat in 1859 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, notified Sir George Ferguson Bowen of his appointment as Governor of the new colony to be known as 'Queen's Land'." The draft letter was ranked #4 in the 'Top 150: Documenting Queensland' exhibition when it toured to venues around Queensland from February 2009 to April 2010.[23] The exhibition was part of Queensland State Archives' events and exhibition program which contributed to the state's Q150 celebrations, marking the 150th anniversary of the separation of Queensland from New South Wales.[24]

British Columbia

When news of the

Colony of British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west"[28] and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific".[25] Lytton desired to send to the colony "representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force", sought men who possessed "courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world",[29] and decided to send Moody, whom the Government considered to be the archetypal "English gentleman and British Officer"[30] at the head of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment to whom he wrote an impassioned letter.[26]

The former HBC Fort Dallas at Camchin, the confluence of the Thompson and the Fraser Rivers, was renamed in his honour by Governor Sir James Douglas in 1858 as Lytton, British Columbia.[31]

Literary works

Bulwer-Lytton's literary career began in 1820 with the publication of a book of poems and spanned much of the 19th century. He wrote in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult and science fiction. He financed his extravagant way of life with a varied and prolific literary output, sometimes publishing anonymously.

Phiz
) frontispiece: Pelham's electioneering visit to the Rev. Combermere St Quintin, who is surprised at dinner with his family.

Bulwer-Lytton published Falkland in 1827, a novel which was only a moderate success.[7] But Pelham brought him public acclaim in 1828 and established his reputation as a wit and dandy.[10] Its intricate plot and humorous, intimate portrayal of pre-Victorian dandyism kept gossips busy trying to associate public figures with characters in the book.[7] Pelham resembled Benjamin Disraeli's first novel Vivian Grey (1827).[10] The character of the villainous Richard Crawford in The Disowned, also published in 1828, borrowed much from that of banker and forger Henry Fauntleroy, who was hanged in London in 1824 before a crowd of some 100,000.[32]

Bulwer-Lytton admired Disraeli's father

Lord Chief Justice of England
in 1859.

Bulwer-Lytton reached his height of popularity with the publication of England and the English,

Karl Briullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii, which Bulwer-Lytton saw in Milan.[34]

His New Timon lampooned Tennyson, who responded in kind.[13] Bulwer-Lytton also wrote the horror story The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain (1859). Another novel with a supernatural theme was A Strange Story (1862), which was an influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula.[35]

Bulwer-Lytton wrote many other works, including Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871) which drew heavily on his interest in the occult and contributed to the early growth of the science fiction genre.[36] Its story of a subterranean race waiting to reclaim the surface of the Earth is an early science fiction theme. The book popularised the Hollow Earth theory and may have inspired Nazi mysticism.[37] His term "vril" lent its name to Bovril meat extract.[38] The book was also the theme of a fundraising event held at the Royal Albert Hall in 1891, the Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete.[39] "Vril" has been adopted by theosophists and occultists since the 1870s and became closely associated with the ideas of an esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945.[40]

His play

Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, on 8 December 1840. The first American production was at the Old Park Theater in New York on 1 February 1841. Subsequent productions include the Prince of Wales's Theatre's in 1872 and as the inaugural play at the new California Theatre (San Francisco) in 1869.[41]

Among Bulwer-Lytton's lesser-known contributions to literature was that he convinced Charles Dickens to revise the ending of Great Expectations to make it more palatable to the reading public, as in the original version of the novel, Pip and Estella do not get together.[42]

Legacy

Bulwer-Lytton's works had an influence in a number of fields.

Quotations

Bulwer-Lytton's most famous quotation is "The pen is mightier than the sword" from his play Richelieu:

beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword

He popularized the phrase "pursuit of the

the great unwashed
", using this disparaging term in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

He is certainly a man who bathes and "lives cleanly", (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).[44]

Theosophy

The writers of

theosophy were among those influenced by Bulwer-Lytton's work. Annie Besant and especially Helena Blavatsky incorporated his thoughts and ideas, particularly from The Last Days of Pompeii, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race and Zanoni in her own books.[45][46]

Contest

Bulwer-Lytton's name lives on in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which contestants think up terrible openings for imaginary novels, inspired by the first line of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:[47]

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Entrants in the contest seek to capture the rapid changes in point of view, the florid language, and the atmosphere of the full sentence.[48] The opening was popularized by the Peanuts comic strip, in which Snoopy's sessions on the typewriter usually began with "It was a dark and stormy night".[49] The same words also form the first sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal–winning novel A Wrinkle in Time. Similar wording appears in Edgar Allan Poe's 1831 short story "The Bargain Lost", although not at the very beginning. It reads:

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces. Who would have thought of passions so fierce in that calm water that slumbers all day long? At a slight alabaster stand, trembling beneath the ponderous tomes which it supported, sat the hero of our story.

Operas

Several of Bulwer-Lytton's novels were made into operas. One of them,

Frederic Cowen's first opera Pauline (1876).[52] Verdi rival Errico Petrella's most successful opera, Jone (1858), was based on Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii, and was performed all over the world until the 1880s, and in Italy until 1910.[53] Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) provided character names (but little else) for Verdi's opera Aroldo (1857).[54]

Theatrical adaptations

Shortly after their first publication, The Last Days of Pompeii, Rienzi, and Ernest Maltravers all received successful stage performances in New York. The plays were written by Louisa Medina, one of the most successful playwrights of the 19th century. The Last Days of Pompeii had the longest continuous stage run in New York at the time with 29 straight performances.[55]

Magazines

In addition to his political and literary work, Bulwer-Lytton became the editor of the New Monthly in 1831, but he resigned the following year. In 1841, he started the Monthly Chronicle, a semi-scientific magazine. During his career he wrote poetry, prose, and stage plays; his last novel was Kenelm Chillingly, which was in course of publication in Blackwood's Magazine at the time of his death in 1873.[13]

Translations

Bulwer-Lytton's works of fiction and non-fiction were translated in his day and since then into many languages, including Serbian (by

Laza Kostic), German, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, French, Finnish, and Spanish. In 1879, his Ernest Maltravers was the first complete novel from the West to be translated into Japanese.[56]

Place names

In

Montcerf-Lytton) was named after him[60] as was Lytton, British Columbia, and Lytton, Iowa. Lytton Road in Gisborne, New Zealand was named after the novelist. Later a state secondary school, Lytton High School, was founded in the road.[61] Also in New Zealand, Bulwer is a small locality in Waihinau Bay in the outer Pelorus Sound, New Zealand. It can be reached by 77 km of winding, mostly unsealed, road from Rai Valley. A weekly mail boat service delivers mail and also offers passenger services. In London, Lytton Road in the suburb of Pinner, where the novelist lived, is named after him.[62]

Portrayal on television

Bulwer-Lytton was portrayed by the actor Brett Usher in the 1978 television serial Disraeli.[63][64]

Works

Novels

Verse

  • Ismael (1820)[10]
  • The Poems and Ballads of Schiller, translator (1844), published by Bernard Tauchnitz, Leipzig
  • The New Timon (1846), an attack on Tennyson published anonymously[10]
  • King Arthur (1848–1849)[10]

Plays

See also

References

  1. ^ required.)
  2. ^ "No. 23137". The London Gazette. 13 July 1866. p. 3984.
  3. ^ McCrum, Robert (17 May 2012). "Dickens, Browning and Lear: what's in a reputation?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018 – via www.theguardian.com.
  4. .
  5. ^ Nevins, Jess (10 March 2011). "An Appreciation of Lord Bulwer-Lytton". io9. Archived from the original on 13 February 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
  6. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/13/us/wonderfully-terrible-writers-discovered.html[dead link]
  7. ^ a b c d e f Waugh 1911, p. 185.
  8. ^ "Bulwer [post Bulwer-Lytton], Edward George [Earle] Lytton (BLWR821EG)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  9. ^ [1] Archived 30 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine History of Parliament Online article.
  10. ^ .
  11. Lady Lytton (1880). A Blighted Life. London: The London Publishing Office. Archived
    from the original on 26 February 2010. Retrieved 28 November 2009. (Online text at wikisource.org)
  12. ^ Devey, Louisa (1887). Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton, with Numerous Extracts from her Ms. Autobiography and Other Original Documents, published in vindication of her memory. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co. Archived from the original on 28 June 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h Waugh 1911, p. 186.
  14. ^ a b c Lord Lytton (1875). "Confessions of a Water-Patient". in Pamphlets and Sketches (Knebworth ed.). London: George Routledge and Sons. pp. 49–75. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
  15. ^ a b Bulwer (April 1863). "Bulwer's Letter on Water-Cure". In R. T. Trall (ed.). The Herald of Health, and The Water-cure journal (see title page of January edition, p. 5). Vol. 35–36. New York: R. T. Trall & Co. pp. 149–154 (see p. 151). Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 26 November 2009.
  16. ^ "Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton's Room", Knebworth House Antique Photographs, archived from the original on 13 July 2011, retrieved 28 November 2009
  17. – via Google Books.
  18. ^ R. A. Gilbert, "The Supposed Rosy Crucian Society", in Caron et al., eds., Ésotérisme, Gnoses et Imaginaire Symbolique, Leuven: Peeters, 2001, p. 399.
  19. ^ .
  20. ^ pixeltocode.uk, PixelToCode. "Famous people / organisations". Westminster Abbey. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008. Retrieved 29 August 2008.
  21. ^ Lord Lytton (1875). "The Present Crisis. A Letter to a Late Cabinet Minister". Pamphlets and Sketches (Knebworth ed.). London: George Routledge and Sons. pp. 9–48. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org).
  22. ^ "No. 19631". The London Gazette. 3 July 1838. p. 1488.
  23. ^ corporateName=Queensland State Archives (5 April 2015). "Number 4 – Draft letter from Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor Bowen". Number 4 – Draft letter from Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor Bowen. Archived from the original on 4 April 2015. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  24. ^ Queensland State Archives (2014), Annual report, Queensland State Archives, retrieved 6 August 2020
  25. ^ a b Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, (Toronto: University of Toronto), p. 71.
  26. ^ a b Drummond, Sir Henry (1908). "XXIII". Rambling Recollections, Vol. 1. Macmillan and Co., London. p. 272.
  27. ^ "Entry for Richard Clement Moody in Dictionary of Canadian Biography". 2002. Archived from the original on 11 October 2012. Retrieved 11 March 2018.
  28. ^ Donald J. Hauka, McGowan's War, Vancouver: 2003, New Star Books, p. 146.
  29. ^ Scott, Laura Elaine (1983). The Imposition of British Culture as Portrayed in the New Westminster Capital Plan of 1859 to 1862. Simon Fraser University. p. 13.
  30. ^ Scott, Laura Elaine (1983). The Imposition of British Culture as Portrayed in the New Westminster Capital Plan of 1859 to 1862. Simon Fraser University. p. 19.
  31. ^ The Canadian Press (17 August 2008). "Toff and prof to duke it out in literary slugfest". CBC News. Archived from the original on 16 January 2009. Retrieved 18 August 2008.
  32. ^ Richard Davenport-Hines, "Fauntleroy, Henry (1784–1824)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004 Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  33. ^ "Lord Beaconsfield's correspondence with his sister, 1832-1852". Library of Congress. letter dated June 29, 1833. Archived from the original on 19 August 2020.
  34. .
  35. – via Google Books.
  36. ^ Nevins, Jess (29 April 2011). "May Day, 1871: The Day "Science Fiction" Was Invented". io9.
  37. .
  38. ^ "Bovril". Unilever.co.uk. Archived from the original on 11 April 2012. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  39. ^ "'The Coming Race' and 'Vril-Ya' Bazaar and Fete, in joint aid of The West End Hospital, and the School of Massage and Electricity". Royal Albert Hall Memories. 27 August 2019. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  40. ^ Julian Strube. Vril. Eine okkulte Urkraft in Theosophie und esoterischem Neonazismus. München/Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink 2013.
  41. ^ Don B. Wilmeth 2007) The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre
  42. ^ John Forster's biography of Dickens
  43. ^ Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, The Coming Race (London, England: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871), page 2 Archived 27 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  44. ^ Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton; Eric Robinson (1838). Paul Clifford. Baudry's European Library. p. x, footnote. Archived from the original on 8 May 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2016.
  45. ^ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race, Introduction by David Seed, Wesleyan University Press, 2007, p. xlii Archived 8 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  46. ^ Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature, Scarecrow Press, 2009, "Blavatsky, Madame (1831–1991)".
  47. ^ Edward Bulwer Lytton, Paul Clifford (Paris, France: Baudry's European Library, 1838), page 1 Archived 27 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  48. ^ Infopédia. "Edward Bulwer-Lytton - Infopédia". Infopédia - Dicionários Porto Editora (in Portuguese). Retrieved 15 August 2021.
  49. ^ Mumford, Tracy (27 October 2015). "Who really wrote 'it was a dark and stormy night'?". MPR.
  50. .
  51. ^ Howard, John Tasker; Bellows, George Kent (1967). A Short History of Music in America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. p. 128.
  52. ^ White, Eric Walter (1951). The Rise of English Opera. London: J. Lehmann. p. 118.
  53. .
  54. ^ Budden, Jullian (1978). The Operas of Verdi. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press. p. 337.
  55. ^ Plays by Early American Women, 1775-1850, Amelia Howe Kritzer, Ed. (1998) Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
  56. .
  57. ^ "Lytton (entry 43599)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 2 September 2015.
  58. ^ "Bulwer – town in City of Brisbane (entry 5168)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  59. ^ "Bulwer Island – neighbourhood in the City of Brisbane (entry 5169)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  60. ^ "Lytton". Banque de noms de lieux du Québec (in French). Commission de toponymie du Québec. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  61. ^ Meade, Geoffrey Thomas (1986). History of the school, 1961–1985: Lytton High School. Thomas Adams Printing. p. 3.
  62. ^ Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1992). The London Encyclopaedia (reprint ed.). Macmillan. p. 617.
  63. ^ Disraeli: Portrait of a Romantic (TV Mini-Series 1978) - IMDb, retrieved 8 February 2021
  64. OCLC 1162842105.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  65. ^ Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton (1 January 2001). The Lady of Lyons; Or, Love and Pride. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. Retrieved 2 October 2014 – via Project Gutenberg.

Further reading

External links

Bulwer-Lytton ebooks

Other links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for St Ives
1831–1832
With: James Halse
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Lincoln
18321841
With: George Heneage to 1835
Charles Sibthorp from 1835
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Hon. Thomas Brand
Abel Smith 1859–65
Henry Surtees from 1864
Henry Cowper
from 1865
Succeeded by
Abel Smith
Political offices
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1858–1859
Succeeded by
The Duke of Newcastle
Academic offices
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1856–1859
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Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Lytton
1866–1873
Succeeded by
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baronet
(of Knebworth)
1838–1873
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