Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote a fantasy/science fiction piece in his novel Zanoni. The novel’s protagonist, labeled by those familiar with him in Italy “the rich Zanoni . . . his wealth is incalculable!,” possesses special powers of the occult that give… Read More ›
H. G. Wells had written the basis for his brief novel The Time Machine in a series of stories published in The Science Schools Journal in 1888. Labeled a dystopia by some critics, the story acts as a warning to… Read More ›
An author with an avid interest in history, especially that of Italy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton focused his historical fiction, Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes, on a real-life figure named Cola di Rienzo. He proves an idealist who brings peace to… Read More ›
Founded in 1809 by John Murray of the powerful publishing house of the same name, as a Tory rival to the Whig periodical The Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly Review was distinguished through association with Sir Walter Scott, among others. Many… Read More ›
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,… Read More ›
The label “Newgate fiction” applied to novels mainly of the 1830s depicting low-life characters and settings distinguished by a focus on crime. The authors Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Harrison Ainsworth wrote the majority of Newgate fiction. The name for the… Read More ›
Edward Bulwer-Lytton found an opportunity to capitalize on his interest in the past and wrote the historical fiction The Last Days of Pompeii. While he had looked to the past for novel plots before, his choice of ancient Italy as… Read More ›
An example of Newgate fiction, in which writers based novels on true criminal accounts, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Eugene Aram established him as the most popular novelist of England during the same year Sir Walter Scott, to whom Bulwer-Lytton dedicated the book’s… Read More ›
In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1871 novel, The Coming Race, later classified as science fiction, the author writes a futuristic novel that complemented his historical fiction. In this plot, often considered a satire on Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, an American mining engineer… Read More ›
The term “fantasy” refers to all works of fiction that attempt neither the realism of the realistic novel nor the “conditional realism” of science fiction. Among modern critics, the primacy of the realistic novel is taken for granted. Realistic novels… Read More ›
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