Bulwer-Lytton, Edward

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward (George Earl)

 later 1st Baron Lytton (of Knebworth)

(born May 25, 1803, London, Eng.—died Jan. 18, 1873, Torquay, Devonshire) British politician, novelist, and poet. His first novel, Pelham, was published in 1828. He entered Parliament as a Liberal in 1831, retired in 1841, and returned in 1852 as a Tory. In the interim he wrote his long historical novels, including The Last Days of Pompeii, 3 vol. (1834), and Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848). He was created a peer in 1866. The opening to his 1830 novel Paul Clifford (“It was a dark and stormy night…”) led to an annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize, in which entrants vie to create the most overwritten first sentence to a hypothetical novel.