LYTTON, EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON, 1ST EARL OF (1831-1891), English diplomatist and poet, was the only son of the 1st Baron Lytton. He was born in Hertford street, Mayfair, on Nov. 8,1831. Robert Lytton went to Harrow in 1845, and then spent a year at Bonn with an English tutor. In 185o he entered the diplomatic service as unpaid attaché to his uncle, Sir Henry Bulwer, who was then minister at Washington. His ad vance in the diplomatic service was continuous, his successive appointments being : as secoml secretary-1852, Florence; 1854, Paris; 1857, The Hague; 1859, Vienna; as first secretary or secre tary of legation-1863, Copenhagen; 1864, Athens; 1865, Lisbon; 1868, Madrid; 1868, Vienna; 1873, Paris; as minister-1875, Lisbon. In 1887 he was appointed to succeed Lord Lyons as am bassador at Paris, and held that office until his death in 1891. In 1864, immediately before taking up his appointment at Athens, he married Edith, daughter of Edward Villiers, brother of the earl of Clarendon, and in 1873, upon the death of his father, he suc ceeded to the peerage and the estate of Knebworth in Hertford shire.
Early in 1875 Lord Lytton declined an offer of appointment as governor of Madras, and in November of that year, at a critical moment, he was nominated governor-general of India by Disraeli. In Central Asia the advance of Russia had continued so steadily and so rapidly that Shere Ali, the amir of Afghanistan, had de termined to seek safety as the vassal of the tsar. Lytton went out to India with express instructions from the British Government to recover the friendship of the amir if possible, and if not so to arrange matters on the north-west frontier as to be able to be indifferent to his hostility. For 18 months Lytton and his council made every effort to conciliate the friendship of the amir, but a Russian agent was established at Kabul, while the mission of Sir Neville Chamberlain was forcibly denied entrance into the amir's dominions. War began in Nov. 1878, and by the close of that year the forces prepared by Lytton for that purpose had achieved their task with extraordinary accuracy and economy. Shere Ali fled from Kabul, and once more it fell to the Indian Government to make provision for the future of Afghanistan. By the treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 Yakub Khan, a son of Shere Ali, was recognized as amir, the main conditions agreed upon being that the districts of Kuram, Pishin and Sibi should be "assigned" to British administration, and the Khyber and other passes be under British control; that there should be a permanent British Resident at Kabul, and that the amir should be subsidized in an amount to be afterwards determined upon. Considerable risk was run in trusting so much, and especially the safety of a British envoy, to the power and the goodwill of Yakub Khan. Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British envoy entered Kabul at the end of July, and was, with his staff, massacred in the rising which took place on Sept. 3. The
war of 1879-80 immediately began, with the occupation of Kanda har by Stewart and the advance upon Kabul by Roberts, and the military operations which followed were not concluded when Lytton resigned his office in April 1880. (See INDIA : History.) Lytton resigned at the same time as the Beaconsfield Ministry, and his Afghan policy was revised by his successor.
The two most considerable events of Lytton's viceroyalty, besides the Afghan wars, were the assumption by Queen Victoria of the title of empress of India (Jan. 1, 1877), and the famine which prevailed in various parts of India in 1876-78. He satisfied himself that periodical famines must be expected in Indian history, and that constant preparation during years of comparative pros perity was the only condition whereby their destructiveness could be modified. Accordingly he obtained the appointment of the famine commission of 1878, to enquire, upon lines laid down by him, into available means of mitigation. Their report, made in 188o, is the foundation of the later system of irrigation, develop ment of communications, and "famine insurance." The equaliza tion and reduction of the salt duty were effected, and the abolition of the cotton duty commenced, during Lytton's term of office, and the system of Indian finance profoundly modified by decen tralization and the regulation of provincial responsibility, in all which matters Lytton enthusiastically supported Sir John Strachey, the financial member of his council.
Upon Lytton's resignation in 188o an earldom was conferred upon him in recognition of his services as viceroy, He lived at Knebworth until 1887, in which year he was appointed to succeed Lord Lyons as ambassador at Paris. He died at Paris on Nov. 1891. He was succeeded by his son (b. 1876) as and earl.
Lytton is known as a poet under the pen-name of "Owen Mere dith. He wrote: Clytemnestra, and other Poems (1855); The Wanderer (1858) ; Lucile (186o) ; Serbski Pesme, or National Songs of Servia (1861), Tannhiiuser (in collaboration with Julian Fane, 1860 ; Chronicles and Characters (1867) ; Orval, or the Fool of Time (1868) ; Fables in Song (2 vols., 1874) ; Glenaveril, or The Metamorphoses (1885); After Paradise, or the Legends of Exile, and other Poems (1887); Marah (1892) ; King Poppy (1892). The two last-mentioned volumes were published posthu mously. A few previously unpublished pieces are included in a volume of Selections published, with an introduction by Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. Besides his volumes of poetry, Lytton published in 1883 two volumes of a biography of his father.