Rosina Bulwer-Lytton

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Right Honourable
The Lady Lytton
Born
Rosina Doyle Wheeler

4 November 1802
Died12 March 1882(1882-03-12) (aged 79)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1827; died 1873)​
Children2, including Robert
Parent(s)Francis Massey Wheeler
Anna Wheeler

Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, Baroness Lytton, (née Rosina Doyle Wheeler; 4 November 1802 – 12 March 1882) was an Anglo-Irish writer who published fourteen novels, a volume of essays, and a volume of letters.

In 1827, she married Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a novelist and politician. Their marriage ended, and he falsely accused her of insanity and had her detained in an insane asylum, which provoked a public outcry. He was made a baronet in the 1830s and was raised to the peerage in 1866; although she had separated from her husband, Lytton used the title Lady Lytton. She spelled her married surname without the hyphen used by her husband.

Early life

Rosina Doyle Wheeler's mother was the

Anglo-Irish landowner.[1] One of her mother's brothers, Sir John Milley Doyle (1781–1856), led British and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War and the War of the Two Brothers.[3]

Wheeler was educated in part by

Mary Mitford, "had a knack of making poetesses of her pupils"[4] This ties her to others among Rowden's pupils, such as Caroline Ponsonby, later Lady Caroline Lamb; the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon ("L.E.L."); Emma Roberts, the travel writer; and Anna Maria Fielding, who published as Mrs. S. C. Hall.[5]

Marriage

Wheeler married Edward Bulwer-Lytton (at that time surnamed simply Bulwer) on 29 August 1827. This was against the wishes of his mother, who withdrew his allowance so that he was forced to work for a living.

better source needed
]

His writing and efforts in the political arena took a toll upon their marriage, and the couple

legally separated in 1836. Her children were taken from her.[7] In 1839, she published her novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, in which Edward Bulwer-Lytton was caricatured
.

In June 1858, Edward Bulwer-Lytton was standing in a

hustings and indignantly denounced him, a scene that her son, Robert
, commemorated in sarcastic verse:

Who came to Hertford in a chaise
And uttered anything but praise
About the author of my days?
My Mother.[8]

She was consequently placed under restraint as insane, and was detained in an establishment in Brentford, but liberated a few weeks later following a public outcry. The imprisonment of socially inconvenient women, at the behest of their male relatives, had been revealed to the public with the case of Louisa Nottidge and Wilkie Collins's novel based on it, The Woman in White. She wrote of her experience in A Blighted Life (1880). Although the book appeared after her husband's death, it caused a rift with her son and she tried to disassociate herself from it.[9][10]

Death

Lady Lytton died in

Upper Sydenham. While her husband was buried in Westminster Abbey, she was buried in an unmarked grave.[11]

Children

They had two children:

Works

  • Cheveley: or, The Man of Honour (in two volumes, 1839)
  • The Budget of the Bubble Family (1840)
  • The Prince-Duke and the Page: An Historical Novel (1843)
  • Bianca Cappello: An Historical Romance (1843)
  • Memoirs of a Muscovite (1844)
  • The Peer's Daughters: A Novel (1849)
  • Miriam Sedley, or the Tares and the Wheat: A Tale of Real Life (1850)
  • The School for Husbands: or Moliére's Life and Times (1852)
  • Behind the Scenes, A Novel (1854)
  • The World and His Wife, or a Person of Consequence, a Photographic Novel (1858)
  • Very Successful (1859)
  • The Household Fairy (1870)
  • Where there's a Will there's a Way (1871)
  • Chumber Chase (1871)
  • Mauleverer's Divorce (1871)
  • Shells from the Sands of Time (1876)
  • A Blighted Life (1880)
  • Refutation of an Audacious Forgery of the Dowager Lady's name to a book of the Publication of which she was totally Ignorant (1880)

References

  1. ^ a b Literary Encyclopaedia - Rosina Bulwer-Lytton (1802-1882) by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, University of the West of England
  2. ^ Edward Cave, John Nichols, eds., The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle (1834), p. 276
  3. ^ Henry Morse Stephens, Doyle, John Milley from Dictionary of National Biography at Wikisource
  4. ISBN 978-3039110971
    .
  5. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/59581. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  6. ^ World Wide Words - Unputdownable
  7. ^ "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton"
  8. ^ Smith, Goldwin, "My Social Life in London," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CVI (1910), p.697.
  9. ^ Lady Lytton (1880). A Blighted Life. London: The London Publishing Office. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Online text at wikisource.org
  10. ^ 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. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
  11. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17316. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)     Subscription or UK public library membership required
  12. ^ "Tragic story of Victorian novelist's distraught daughter". 2017.

Further reading

External links

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Rosina Bulwer Lytton
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