In his first novel, Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, Edward Bulwer-Lytton shaped a character named Henry Pelham who introduced an enduring ritual into English society. A dandy known for his pretentious behavior, Pelham dressed in black for dinner, a trend that would spread in England and remain popular. After Pelham’s mother remarked on his distinguished appearance in black, colored coats were rarely seen in London high society, and black remained the acceptable evening wear for men for decades.

An unlikely hero, Pelham nevertheless proves the innocence of a friend accused of murder by launching an investigation, and acts as a foil to his fellow character Richard Glanville, a criminal. He expresses his own intellectual development, opening chapter 44 in the fourth volume: “Beneath all the carelessness of my exterior, my mind was close, keen, and inquiring; and under the affectations of foppery, and the levity of a manner almost unique, for the effeminacy of its tone, I veiled an ambition the most extensive in its object, and a resolution the most daring in the accomplishment of its means.” Although some critics label Pelham a Byronic hero, others feel he stands in direct contrast to that popular characterization.

More important than Pelham’s effect on the styles of the day was the novel’s effect on the popular Bildungsroman. While the book contained some inconsistencies, it varied the genre’s traditional German intensity, offering instead an upbeat tone laced with humor and common sense. Along with Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey (1826), Pelham introduced English readers to what would later be labeled the intellectual novel, one that focused on ideas rather than promotion of a specific political point of view.

Building on Laurence Sterne’s momentum, Bulwer-Lytton and Disraeli urged independent thought among their readers, employing satire and scandal as plot elements. Based on the true Thurtell case of 1824, the novel owed an additional debt to William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), a psychological novel with a Gothic narrative frame. Pelham also served as silver-fork fiction, an extremely popular subgenre of social fiction.

Bulwer-Lytton remains sensitive to all the current patterns of his society, skillfully capturing scenes representative of the early 19th century. The witty novel was blasted by many of the author’s contemporaries as insubstantial and contemptuous of English society. But Bulwer-Lytton sought through irony, rather than mean-spiritedness, to undercut the criticism of such moralists who failed to recognize in Pelham a dispassionate honesty sorely missing from many relationships. It remains available in print and electronic form.

Bibliography
McGann, Jerome J. Introduction to Pelham, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
Mitchell, L. G. Bulwer-Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters. New York: Hambledon and London, 2003.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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