Bulwer‐Lytton, Edward

Edward Lytton Bulwer (1803–73) was among the most prominent young literary stars in the late Romantic period in the wake of Byron's death. Seldom read today and known more for giving his name to the notorious Bulwer‐Lytton Awards for the worst fiction of the year, Sir Edward Bulwer‐Lytton was, from the late 1820s until his death in 1873, one of the most popular and celebrated literary and political figures of his day. Though his career would extend well into the Victorian era, when he was as widely read as Dickens, Bulwer began his career as novelist in the transitional period that Richard Cronin has aptly designated the ‘Romantic Victorians’. During the late 1820s Bulwer was famous first for the dissemination of ideas of Byronism and Dandyism and then their critique and reformulation. His reputation began to falter soon after his death, leading Bulwer to be unjustly neglected as an early originator of many literary genres, including modern tales of the supernatural and occult, mystery, suspense and detection, the sensation novel, and science fiction. Among his early admirers was the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose tales of mystery and horror were heavily influenced by Bulwer's fiction. Before Dickens and Thackeray emerged in the late 1830s, Bulwer was the most original and important novelist in England.