Background
Bulwer-Lytton was born on May 23, 1803 in London, England.
(The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron ...)
The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. The novel was inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov, which Bulwer-Lytton had seen in Milan. Once a very widely read book and now relatively neglected, it culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The novel uses its characters to contrast the decadent culture of 1st-century Rome with both older cultures and coming trends. The protagonist, Glaucus, represents the Greeks who have been subordinated by Rome, and his nemesis Arbaces the still older culture of Egypt. Olinthus is the chief representative of the nascent Christian religion, which is presented favourably but not uncritically. The Witch of Vesuvius, though she has no supernatural powers, shows Bulwer-Lytton's interest in the occult a theme which would emerge in his later writing, particularly The Coming Race.
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novelist playwright politician poet
Bulwer-Lytton was born on May 23, 1803 in London, England.
As a child the future novelist was delicate, but he learned to read at a surprisingly early age and began to write verses before he was ten years old. Going first to a small private school at Fulham, he soon passed on to another one at Rottingdean, and here he continued to manifest literary tastes, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott being his chief idols at this time.
In 1827 Bulwer-Lytton published an unsuccessful novel during the same year, but Pelham (1828), the adventures of a dandy, inaugurated his career as a fluent, popular novelist. The couple’s extravagant style of living necessitated a large output of work, and the strain made Bulwer-Lytton an irritable and negligent husband. After many violent quarrels, he and Rosina were legally separated in 1836. Bulwer-Lytton’s political career began in 1831, when he entered Parliament as Liberal member for Lincoln. In 1841 he retired in protest against repeal of the Corn Laws. This, together with his friendship with Benjamin Disraeli, converted him into a Tory, and in 1852 he returned to the House as member for Hertfordshire.
Bulwer-Lytton’s literary activity had, meanwhile, been immense. His popularity was largely a result of his skill in anticipating and satisfying changes in public taste. He flirted quite successfully with the theatre, though his plays have not endured. Having started as a novelist with Pelham, which combined Gothic romance with a setting of the fashionable world, he then embarked on a series of historical novels, weighted with meticulous detail, the most notable of which were The Last Days of Pompeii, 3 vol. (1834), and Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848). In Eugene Aram, 3 vol. (1832), he made use of current fascination with criminals and the underworld. He turned to realism and the portrayal of English society in The Caxtons, 3 vol. (1849), and My Novel (1853). Bulwer-Lytton also published several volumes of poetry, a satirical novel in verse (containing an attack on Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate), and an unsuccessful long epic, King Arthur (1848). He was created a peer in 1866.
Contemporary literary critics, notably William Makepeace Thackeray, attacked him unmercifully, especially in Fraser’s Magazine, and his reputation declined sharply in the 20th century.
(The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron ...)
Parliament, Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Politics
Lord Melbourne, Jeremy Bentham
In 1827 he made an unwise marriage.
Lytton was, by many estimates, a lonely and misjudged man.
1st Baron Lytton