My mother moved into assisted living and recently sold her house. My siblings and I had the challenge of clearing out forty years of stuff and dividing up what was valuable.
Some of the things that needed dividing were some rare, old books sets. One was a compete collection of Shakespeare in three large volumes with beautiful engraved illustrations. Most everything was distributed during my siblings last trip to Minnesota, but two sets of books still remain on my porch. Rather than taking them in to sell at a rare book store, I decided to examine them. One was a series of 23 books by Bulwer published in 1891 and 1892 in Boston.
Who was Bulwer? I looked him up and discovered that Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a British author and politician who lived from 1803 to 1873. He was a prolific, successful writer who wrote in a variety of genres including mystery, romance and science fiction. He also wrote poetry and plays.
He married Rosina Bulwer Lytton (who was also a writer), but the marriage broke down and they were legally separated. He took away their children and when she denounced him, during a political campaign he put her in an insane asylum. This provoked a public outcry and she was released shortly afterwards. (In those days husbands or male relatives were allowed to put women in insane asylums for voicing strong opinions.)
One of Bulwer’s most popular books was Last Days of Pompeii, a historical fiction novel about a young couple in the doomed Roman city before and during the volcanic eruption. It was made into two different movies and a TV series.
In 1871 he wrote The Coming Race, a science fiction novel. It was the last book he wrote and was published under a pen name. The work was published years before other better known science fiction authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle (best known for Sherlock Holmes), and Edger Rice Burroughs (best known for Tarzan and his Venus series) and HG Wells ( best known for The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine).
Charles Dickins, a friend of Bulwer, was enamored by The Coming Race. Dickins also rewrote the end of Great Expectations to make it a happier ending at Bulwer’s suggestion.
The Coming Race was about a man who, when exploring a deep chasm discovers a world of advanced people who live in the center of earth. This race of people had developed psychic power for manipulating a force call “vril”.
Bulwer coined some phrases like: “The pen is mightier than the sword” ( Richelieu) “The great unwashed” (Paul Clifford), “pursuit of the almighty dollar.” (The Coming Race)
He’s also know for opening his novel, Paul Clifford, with the phrase: “It was a dark and stormy night.” It’s considered a bad way to open a novel and was used repeatedly in Snoopy cartoons where Snoopy is sitting on his dog house typing the beginning of his novel and begins it with “It was a dark and stormy night”. There is even an annual contest called Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest—wretched writers welcome. The instructions are to write an “Atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical bad novel”.
The whole opening paragraph reads: “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.”
The phrase had actually been around for many years before Bulwer used it but the damage had been done and the phrase linked Bulwer’s name to bad writing.
Bulwer was very popular in his day, but currently isn’t read much. Some even state he wasn’t a good writer. He did, however, take up social issues like Dickins and was very popular during his life. Bulwer was also significant in the development of science fiction as a genre.
After learning all this about Bulwer, I decide to read one of his books. I’m currently enjoying The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849). The book was instantly popular in Britain and sold 35,000 copies in the United States in three years. Interestingly, though the book has been in my family 131 years, it’s never been read as I discovered when I found some of the pages have never been separated, meaning cut apart since the book was published in1891.
The writing reminds me a somewhat of Dickens with its long paragraphs and sentences, and style of writing popular in that period of history. So far I find it rather charming though not a page turner. Regardless, it just goes to show that treasures can be found among old family things.
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