Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician, known for historical romances, sensational fiction, and the speculative novel The Coming Race.

The Last Days of Pompeii: A 1834 historical novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton set during the destruction of Pompeii in 79 CE. Its archaeological spectacle made Bulwer-Lytton’s historical fiction internationally popular.
Historical novel: A work of fiction set in a past period and shaped by historical settings, events, or figures. Bulwer-Lytton used historical settings to turn political conflict into popular narrative.
Benjamin Disraeli: British Conservative politician and novelist who served as prime minister in the nineteenth century. Like Bulwer-Lytton, Disraeli combined a career in politics with commercially successful fiction.
It was a dark and stormy night: The opening phrase of Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford, now a cliché of melodramatic prose. Its fame as a literary joke has overshadowed the novel that first used it.
The Coming Race: A 1871 speculative novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton about a subterranean civilization with advanced technology and social organization. Its imagined Vril-powered society became his most influential contribution to speculative fiction.
Gothic fiction: A literary mode featuring terror, mystery, the supernatural, and settings such as castles or ruined buildings. Gothic conventions inform the menace and spectacle in several of his novels.
Charles Dickens: English novelist whose works portrayed social conditions and became widely popular in the Victorian era. Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton were influential contemporaries whose literary reputations and styles differed sharply.
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: An annual contest inviting deliberately bad opening sentences inspired by Bulwer-Lytton’s famous phrase. The contest turned his name into shorthand for overwrought openings.
Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman: An 1828 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that helped establish the fashionable dandy as a literary character. This early success launched his career and helped shape the Victorian image of the dandy.
Silver-fork novel: A nineteenth-century novel depicting the manners and social world of the British aristocracy and fashionable classes. His early fiction helped popularize stories of fashionable life and social ambition.

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William Harrison AinsworthRelated: His popular historical novels shared Ainsworth’s market for lavish, dramatic historical fiction.