LYTTON, EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON, BULWER-LYTTON, 1ST BARON (1803-1873), English novel ist and politician, the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk, was born in London on May 25, 1803. He had two brothers, William 1877) and Henry (1801-72), afterwards Lord Dalling (q.v.). Bulwer's father died when the boy was four years old. His mother, Elizabeth Barbara, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire, after her husband's death settled in London. Bulwer was educated at private schools and at Trinity college and Trinity hall, Cambridge. Before he went to Cambridge he had published a volume of verse, and had fallen in love. The lady married another, to Bulwer's lasting grief. After leaving Cambridge he published some volumes of juvenilia which he afterward ignored.
Meanwhile he had begun to take his place in society, being already known as a dandy of considerable pretensions, who had acted as second in a duel and experienced the fashionable round of flirtation and intrigue. He purchased a commission in the army, only to sell it again without undergoing any service, and in Aug. 1827 married, in opposition to his mother's wishes, Rosina Doyle Wheeler (1802-82), an Irish beauty, niece and adopted daughter of General Sir John Doyle. She was a brilliant but pas sionate girl, and upon his marriage with her, Bulwer's mother withdrew the allowance she had hitherto made him. In the year of his marriage he published Falkland, and in 1828 Pelham, a novel for which he had gathered material during a visit to Paris in 1825. This intimate study of the dandyism of the age, was immediately popular, and gossip was busy in identifying the characters of the romance with the leading men of the time.
In the same year he published The Disowned, following it up with Devereux (1829), Paul Clifford (183o), Eugene Aram (1832) and Godolphin (1833). All these novels were designed with a didactic purpose, somewhat upon the German model. To embody the leading features of a period, to show how a criminal may be reformed by the development of his own character, to explain the secrets of failure and success in life, these were the avowed objects of his art. Meanwhile he became a follower of Bentham, and in 1831 was elected member for St. Ives, Hunting don. In 1836 he and his wife were legally separated. Three years later his wife published a novel called Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, in which Bulwer was bitterly caricatured, and in June 1858, when her husband was standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she appeared at the hustings and indignantly denounced him. She was placed under restraint as insane, but liberated a few weeks later. For years she continued her attacks upon her husband's character, and outlived him by nine years, dying at Upper Sydenham in March 1882.
After representing St. Ives, Bulwer was returned for Lincoln in 1832, and sat in parliament for that city for nine years. He spoke in favour of the Reform Bill, and secured the reduction of the newspaper stamp duties. His pamphlet, issued when the Whigs were dismissed from office in 1834, entitled "A Letter to a Late Cabinet Minister on the Crisis," led to an offer from Lord Melbourne of a lordship of the Admiralty, which he declined.
He continued to write indefatigably. Godolphin was followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), and Rienzi (1835). These books were received with enthusiasm, and Ernest Maltravers (1837) and Alice, or the Mysteries (1838) were hardly less successful. In 1831 he be came editor of the New Monthly, which, however, he resigned in the following year, but in 1841, the year in which he published Night and Morning, he started the Monthly Chronicle, a semi scientific magazine, for which he wrote Zicci, an unfinished first draft afterwards expanded into Zanoni (1842). Simultaneously he was writing plays. In 1838 he produced The Lady of Lyons, a play which Macready made a great success at Covent Garden: in 1839 Richelieu and The Sea Captain, and in 1840 Money. All, except The Sea Captain, were successful, and this solitary failure he revived in 5869 under the title of The Rightful Heir. Of the others it may be said that, though they abound in exam ples of strained sentiment and false taste, they have nevertheless a certain theatrical flair, which has enabled them to survive a whole library of stage !iterature of greater sincerity and truer feeling. The Lady of Lyons and Money have long held the stage, and the latter has provided a good part for many comedians.
In 1838 Bulwer was created a baronet, and on succeeding to the Knebworth estate in 1843 added Lytton to his surname, under the terms of his mother's will. From 1841 to 1852 he had no seat in parliament, and spent much of his time in continental travel. His later historical romances are The Last of the Barons (1843), Lucretia, or the Children of the Night (1847), and Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings (1848). In the intervals between these he had produced a volume of poems in 1842, another of trans lations from Schiller in 1844, and a satire called The New Timon in 1846, in which Tennyson, who had just received a civil list pension, was bitterly lampooned. His most ambitious work in metre, a romantic epic entitled King Arthur, had no success. His best work in the novel was still to come. His historical novels are much better than it has been the fashion to think. In The Caxtons (1849) he turned to English society, and in My Novel (1853) and Kenelin Chillingly (1873) he gave an unrivalled picture of English society in the mid-Victorian era. Other late works are A Strange Story (1862), The Coining Race (1871) and The Parisians (1873).
In 1852 he entered the political field anew, and in the Con servative interest. He had differed from the policy of Lord John Russell over the corn laws, and now separated finally from the Liberals. He stood for Hertfordshire and was elected, holding the seat till 1866, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth. His eloquence gave him the ear of the House of Commons, and he often spoke with influence and authority. In 1858 he was appointed secretary for the colonies. In the House of Lords he was comparatively inactive.
See T. H. S. Escott, Edward Bulwer, 1st Baron Lytton of Kneb worth (Iwo).