Odd how things come in clumps. Prior to last evening, I had never even heard of the popular Victorian novelist and historian Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I first came across his name in an intriguing TLS article by Oswyn Murray, who claimed that Bulwer-Lytton had a special place in the development of modern classical scholarship, though his role has been (deliberately?) obscured by later writers. Then the March 2004 issue of First Things has Richard Neuhaus commenting on the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (also mentioned by Murray), that challenges writers to write “the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel.” Turns out, I’ve been reading Bulwer-Lytton for years without knowing it; he first penned the words “It was a dark and stormy night,” the opening words to the great unfinished novel of Snoopy (of Peanuts fame). These things usually come in threes, so I’m expecting that tomorow I’ll discover that Edward Bulwer-Lytton was my maternal great-grand uncle once removed.
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