THE REMAINS OF A VANISHED GIANT

 

See Also: CHARLES DICKENS; SAUCES, PICKLES & CONCENTRATES Bovril

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was born the youngest son of a dysfunctional landowning family. His heiress mother doted upon him as a means of finding consolation for the emotional aridness of her marriage. The child proved to be precocious.

At the age of 24 Bulwer-Lytton married Rosina Wheeler. His mother had disapproved of the prospective match. Following the wedding she terminated his generous allowance. This had enabled him to conduct his life in an aristocratic manner. His residual income was derived from a modest legacy that his father had bequeathed him. He and his bride were able to rent a house in the Oxfordshire countryside. The youth had already acquired a modest reputation for his literary compositions. He endeavoured to discover whether his skills as a wordsmith were sufficient to earn him a living.

Bulwer-Lytton s first novel was Falkland (1827). The book's sales proved to be modest. His second was Pelham (1828). It was a satire of dandyism. It proved to be a major success and established his literary reputation. The work also had a lasting impact upon attire. It helped to establish black tie as the formal evening wear for men.

In the years that followed, the fellow wrote novels in several different genres. The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) is his best-known one. He extended historical fiction as a form by basing it upon rigorous research. He flaunted his investigative labours by means of inserting numerous footnotes. In addition, he produced poetry, history, social commentary, short stories, and plays.

An element of Pelham had been the way in which the protagonist had matured into accepting his social obligations. Bulwer-Lytton appears to have felt that he was bound by the same duty. The income that his sales generated enabled him and his wife to return to London life in 1829. He began to lay the foundations for a possible political career.

Literary labouring, social demands, and political ambition led Bulwer-Lytton to neglect his marriage. It was placed under additional strain by his philandering. In parallel, he and his mother began to re-establish a cordial relationship with one another. In 1833-4 Bulwer-Lytton and his wife visited Italy in an attempt to rekindle their union. He was captivated by what they encountered, her reaction was the inverse. The distance between them continued to grow. They separated legally in 1836. She spent the rest of his life trying to persecute him whenever an opportunity to do so arose. She wrote a series of novels that lampooned him and his output.

Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton were friends who admired one another's work. The latter's novel A Strange Story (1862) appeared initially as a part-work in the former's magazine All The Year Round. Dickens, with his advance access to the material, was able to comment upon it prior to its publication. Bulwer-Lytton noted the criticisms. His associate's counsel prompted him to change the story's original d nouement.

The influence was mutual. It was because of Bulwer-Lytton's opinion that Dickens in turn altered the way in which Great Expectations (1861) ends. He gave it a happier tone than had been his intention originally. In some of his books he ploughed a furrow that had already been cut by his associate. The crime novel Oliver Twist (1838) had been preceded by Paul Clifford (1830), while the French Revolution setting of A Tale of Two Cities (1859) echoed that of Zanomi (1842).

A by-product of the growth of the railways was that the demand for fiction surged. Therefore, sales of Bulwer-Lytton's backlist persisted year-in, year-out. Dickens was the only writer to outsell him during their lifetimes. The former proved to be able to work successfully in more forms and genres than the latter was able to.

After Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton was the most translated English novelist of the 19thC. Richard Wagner became famous through his opera Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (1842). This was based upon the writer's historical novel Rienzi, Last of The Roman Tribunes, which had been published seven years earlier. Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871) was a dystopian satire that was set in a subterranean world. The anonymously published tale was effectively a work of science fiction. It is reputed that many leading members of the Theosophical movement took the volume to be factual. It is said to have been one of the favourite books of a certain Adolf Hitler, who was also besotted by Wagner's Rienzi.

Bulwer-Lytton was first elected to the Commons as an independent radical in 1831. Over the following two decades his politics drifted in a rightwards direction. This process was abetted by his friendship with Benjamin Disraeli, who had established himself as a novelist before entering Parliament. By the 1850s Bulwer-Lytton had become almost deaf. However, he proved to be an effective frontbench speaker for the Tories. In 1858 the 14th Earl of Derby appointed him to serve as Colonial Secretary. Ill-health caused the M.P. to resign from the office the following year. In 1866 a peerage was conferred upon him.

One of the principal reasons for Bulwer-Lytton's vast sales was that his output reflected the era in which it was written. The works possessed a large element of moralising. When the prevailing ethos changed, interest in his books was to largely vanish. His haughty aristocratic worldview was a boon while he was alive. However, with the passage of the years, it proved to be a liability for the durability of his literary standing. During his lifetime his reputation rode the crest of the wave of High Gothic.1 However, ultimately High Gothic was a fashion and like all fashions it passed.

Bulwer-Lytton s ornate prose when it was first published was held to be fine writing. However, with time, it came to be regarded as being almost a parody of itself. His novels do not form part of the canon of English literature. Yet, the very floridity of his language did manage to render some of his phrases resilient. The survivors include The pen is mightier than the sword and It was a dark and stormy night . In The Coming Race he coined the word vril to describe a physically empowering draught. This has survived in the brand name of the beef extract Bovril.

The writer is commemorated by the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. This competition bestows a prize upon the person who can craft the worst opening line that a novel could start with.

Location: 26 Hertford Street, W1J 7SA. The first townhouse that Bulwer-Lytton rented. (blue, yellow)

Website: www.bulwer-lytton.com (The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest was founded in 1982 by Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University, California) www.knebworthhouse.com (The novelist's country home)

1. In 1843 he inherited Knebworth, his mother's ancestral seat in Hertfordshire. He Gothicised the building.

David Backhouse 2024