The Coming Race [as by Edward Bulwer Lord Lytton] 2006 The Coming Race [as by Edward Bulwer Lytton] 2007 Vril, The Power of the Coming Race: 2008 Vril: the Power of the Coming Race: 2010 The Coming Race, Or, the New Utopia; Leila [as by Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton] 2010 The Coming Race [as by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton] 2013 The Coming Race [as.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer ( 1803-05-25)25 May 1803 London Died 18 January 1873 (1873-01-18) (aged 69) Nationality Political party (1831–1841) (1851–1866) Spouse(s) (1802–1882) Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a MP from 1831 to 1841 and a MP from 1851 to 1866. He was from June 1858 to June 1859, when he selected to be founder of. He was offered the Crown of Greece in 1862 after the abdication of, but declined it.
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He became Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. His son was the statesman, who served as and British Ambassador to France, and wrote poetry under the pseudonym Owen Meredith. Bulwer-Lytton's literary works were highly popular; his novels earned him a fortune. He coined the phrases 'the ', 'pursuit of the ', ', and '. Then came a sharp decline in his reputation, so that he is known today for little more than the opening line ', the first seven words of his novel (1830). The sardonic attempts to find the 'opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels'. Contents.
Life Bulwer-Lytton was born on 25 May 1803 to General William Earle Bulwer of and, Norfolk and, daughter of of, Hertfordshire. He had two older brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and (1801–1872), later Lord Dalling and Bulwer. When Edward was four, his father died and his mother moved to London. He was a delicate, neurotic child and was discontented at a number of boarding schools. But he was precocious and Mr. Wallington at Baling encouraged him to publish, at the age of fifteen, an immature work, Ishmael and Other Poems.
In 1822 he entered, where he met, but shortly afterwards moved to. In 1825 he won the for English verse. In the following year he took his BA degree and printed, for private circulation, a small volume of poems, Weeds and Wild Flowers. He purchased a commission in the army in 1826, but sold it in 1829 without serving. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. His Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) was the source for Verdi's opera.
In August 1827, he married (1802–1882), a famous Irish beauty, but against his mother's wishes, who withdrew his allowance, so that he was forced to work for a living. They had two children, Lady Emily Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton (1828–1848), and (1831–1891) who became (1876–1880). His writing and political work strained their marriage, while his infidelity embittered Rosina; in 1833 they separated acrimoniously and in 1836 the separation became legal. Three years later, Rosina published Cheveley, or the Man of Honour (1839), a near-libellous fiction bitterly satirising her husband's alleged hypocrisy.
In June 1858, when her husband was standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she indignantly denounced him at the. He retaliated by threatening her publishers, withholding her allowance, and denying her access to the children. Finally he had her committed to a mental asylum, but after a public outcry, she was released a few weeks later. This incident was chronicled in her memoir, (1880).
She continued her attacks upon her husband's character for several years. Bulwer-Lytton in later life The death of Bulwer-Lytton's mother in 1843 greatly saddened him. His own 'exhaustion of toil and study had been completed by great anxiety and grief,' and by 'about the January of 1844, I was thoroughly shattered'. In his mother's room at, Bulwer-Lytton 'had inscribed above the mantelpiece a request that future generations preserve the room as his beloved mother had used it.' It remains essentially unchanged to this day. 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. His widowed mother had done the same in 1811.
His brothers remained plain 'Bulwer'. By chance Bulwer-Lytton encountered a copy of ' work on the ', as practised by, 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!' After reading a pamphlet by Doctor James Wilson, who operated a hydropathic establishment with at, he stayed there for 'some nine or ten weeks', after which he 'continued the system some seven weeks longer under Doctor Weiss, at ', then again at 'Doctor Schmidt's magnificent hydropathic establishment at Boppart' (at the former Marienberg Convent at ), after developing a cold and fever upon his return home.
When abdicated in 1862, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the crown of Greece, which he declined. The English society, founded in 1867 by, claimed Bulwer-Lytton as their 'Grand Patron', but he wrote to the society complaining that he was 'extremely surprised' by their use of the title, as he had 'never sanctioned such'. Nevertheless, a number of esoteric groups have continued to claim Bulwer-Lytton as their own, chiefly because some of his writings—such as the 1842 book —have included Rosicrucian and other esoteric notions. According to the, he once resided in the original, today the site of their stadium. Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered with a disease of the ear and for the last two or three years of his life he lived in nursing his health. Following an operation to cure, an abscess formed in his ear and burst; he endured intense pain for a week and died at 2am on 18 January 1873 just short of his 70th birthday.
The cause of death was not clear but it was thought that the infection had affected his brain and caused a fit. Rosina outlived him by nine years.
Against his wishes, Bulwer-Lytton was honoured with a burial in. His unfinished history Athens: Its Rise and Fall was published posthumously. Caricature by published in in 1870 Bulwer-Lytton began his career as a follower of. In 1831 he was elected for in Cornwall, after which he was returned for in 1832, and sat in for that city for nine years. He spoke in favour of the, and took the leading part in securing the reduction, after vainly essaying the repeal, of the. His influence was perhaps most keenly felt when, on the dismissal from office in 1834, he issued a pamphlet entitled A Letter to a Late Cabinet Minister on the Crisis., then, offered him a lordship of the, which he declined as likely to interfere with his activity as an author.
He was created a Baronet, of Knebworth House in the County of Hertford, in the, in 1838. In 1841, he left Parliament and did not return to politics until 1852, when, having differed from the policy of over the, he stood for as a. Lord Lytton held that seat until 1866, when he was raised to the as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in the County of Hertford. In 1858 he entered 's as, thus serving alongside his old friend.
In the he was comparatively inactive. British Columbia When news of the reached London, Bulwer-Lytton, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies, requested that the War Office recommend a field officer, 'a man of good judgement possessing a knowledge of mankind', to lead a Corps of 150 (later increased to 172) Royal Engineers, who had been selected for their 'superior discipline and intelligence'. The War Office chose: and Lord Lytton, who described Moody as his 'distinguished friend', accepted the nomination, in view of Moody's military record, his success as Governor of the Falkland Islands, and the distinguished record of his father, at the Colonial Office. Moody was charged to establish British order and to transform the newly established into the British Empire's 'bulwark in the farthest west' and 'found a second England on the shores of the Pacific.' Lytton desired to send to the colony 'representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force': he sought men who possessed 'courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world,' and decided to send Moody, whom the Government considered to be the archetypal 'English gentleman and British Officer.' At the head of the, to whom he wrote an impassioned letter. The former Fort Dallas at, the confluence of the and, was renamed in his honour by Governor in 1858 as.
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, the, and science fiction. He financed his extravagant life with a varied and prolific literary output, sometimes publishing anonymously. 1849 printing of Pelham with Hablot K.
Browne frontispiece: Pelham's electioneering visit to the Rev. Combermere St Quintin, who is surprised at dinner with his family. In 1828 Pelham brought him public acclaim and established his reputation as a wit and dandy. Its intricate plot and humorous, intimate portrayal of pre-Victorian dandyism kept gossips busy trying to associate public figures with characters in the book. Pelham resembled Benjamin Disraeli's recent (1827). The character of the villainous Richard Crawford in The Disowned, also published in 1828, borrowed much from that of the banker and forger, who was hanged in London in 1824 before a crowd of some 100,000. Bulwer-Lytton admired Disraeli's father, himself a noted author.
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They began corresponding in the late 1820s and met for the first time in March 1830, when Isaac D'Israeli dined at Bulwer-Lytton's house. (Also present that evening were. The young Villiers was to have a long parliamentary career, while Cockburn became in 1859.) Bulwer-Lytton reached the height of his popularity with the publication of Godolphin (1833).
This was followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), (1834), (1835), (1838) and Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848). The Last Days of Pompeii was inspired by 's painting, which Bulwer-Lytton saw in. He also wrote the horror story 'The Haunted and the Haunters' or 'The House and the Brain' (1859). Another novel dealing with a supernatural theme was A Strange Story (1862), which was an influence on 's.
Bulwer-Lytton penned many other works, including The Coming Race or (1871), which drew heavily on his interest in the occult and contributed to the early growth of the science fiction genre. Its story of a subterranean race waiting to reclaim the surface of the Earth is an early. The book popularised the and may have inspired Nazi. His term 'vril' lent its name to meat extract.
Adopted by theosophists and occultists since the 1870s, 'vril' would develop into a major esoteric topic, and eventually become closely associated with the ideas of an esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945. His play (1840) was first produced at the, 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 's in 1872 and it was also the inaugural play at the new in San Francisco in 1869.
Among Bulwer-Lytton's lesser-known contributions to literature was that he convinced to revise the ending of to make it more palatable to the reading public, as in the original version of the novel, Pip and Estella do not get together. Legacy Quotations Bulwer-Lytton's most famous quotation, ', is from his play Richelieu where it appears in the line: beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword In addition, he popularized the phrase 'pursuit of the ' from his novel. He is also credited with 'the great unwashed'.
He used this rather 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. Has been cited as the first source, but inspection of the original text shows this to be wrong. However, the term 'the Unwashed' with the same meaning, appears in The Parisians: 'He says that Paris has grown so dirty since 4 September, that it is only fit for the feet of the Unwashed.' The Parisians, though, was not published until 1872, while 's novel Pendennis (1850) uses the phrase ironically, implying it was already established. The refers to 'Messrs. ' in Lytton's Paul Clifford (1830), as the earliest instance.
Bulwer-Lytton is also credited with an appellation for the Germans: 'Das Volk der Dichter und Denker' (The people of poets and thinkers). Theosophy Also the writers of were influenced by his work. And especially incorporated his thoughts and ideas from particularly The Last Days of Pompeii, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race and in her own books. Further information: Bulwer-Lytton's name lives on in the annual, in which contestants think up terrible openings for imaginary novels, inspired by the first line of his 1830 novel:; 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.
The opening was popularized by the comic strip, in which 's sessions on the typewriter usually began with. The same words also form the first sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's -winning novel. Similar wording appears in Edgar Allan Poe's 1831 short story, although not at the very beginning. It reads: It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts.
Operas Several of Bulwer-Lytton's novels were made into operas, one of which, (1842) by, eventually became more famous than the novel. Leonora (1846) by, the first European-styled 'grand' opera composed in the United States, is based on Bulwer-Lytton's play, as is 's first opera (1876). Verdi rival 's most successful opera, (1858), was based upon Bulwer-Lytton's, and was performed all over the world until the First World War.
Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) was the source for Verdi's opera in 1857. Magazines In 1831 Bulwer-Lytton became the editor of the New Monthly 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 at the time of his death in 1873.
Translations Bulwer-Lytton's works of fiction and non-fiction were translated in his day and since then into many languages, including Serbian (by ), 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. Place names In Queensland, Australia the Brisbane suburb of Lytton is to be found on Bulwer Island which today is home to the Port of Brisbane. Also in Queensland on Moreton Island (Moorgumpin) is located another settlement by the name of Bulwer. The township of Lytton, Quebec (today part of ) was named after him as was, and Lytton, Iowa.
Lytton Road in was named after the novelist. Later a state secondary school, was founded in the road. Portrayal on television Bulwer-Lytton was portrayed by the actor in the 1978 television serial. Works by Edward Bulwer-Lytton Novels.