Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton first Baron Lytton
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Standard Name: Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton,,, first Baron
Birth Name: Edward George Earle Bulwer
Self-constructed Name: Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton
Titled: Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
, who began his prolific career as Edward Bulwer, wrote many kinds of novels—from the silver-fork genre (whose name derived from a derisive reference to Bulwer himself as a silver fork polisher
qtd. in
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
103
in Fraser's Magazine ) and domestic fiction to crime or Newgate
novels (the forerunner of sensation fiction), science fiction, and occult stories. He also wrote three plays, several books of poetry, and an Arthurian epic, as well as editing The New Monthly Magazine from 1831 to 1833.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
Back in England, HW
attempted to cultivate new friendships. She corresponded with Bulwer Lytton
in letters full of acute criticism of his writing, but never persuaded him to know her socially.
Wilson, Frances. The Courtesan’s Revenge. Faber, 2003.
274-7
Friends, Associates
Rhoda Broughton
RB
's vitality, sincerity, and pungent wit gained her the friendship of some of the most notable people of her day.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Her wide circle of friends and acquaintances included Henry James
(the two became extremely...
Friends, Associates
Augusta Ada Byron
AAB
remained close friends with Mary Somerville's family, and particularly with her eldest son by her first marriage, Woronzow Greig
, for the rest of her life. Somerville not only fostered Ada's mathematical aptitude, but...
Friends, Associates
Anna Wheeler
His fuller description (in a letter to his sister) was not so pleasant, something between Jeremy Bentham
and Meg Merrilies, very clever, but awfully revolutionary.
Disraeli, Benjamin. Lord Beaconsfield’s Correspondence With His Sister 1832-1852. John Murray, 1886.
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
26
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
She was a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne
(whom she never met, but of whose wife and family she remained a faithful friend and correspondent after Hawthorne's death), Bulwer Lytton
, and Charles Kingsley
(all of...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
HM
's social circle vastly expanded at this time until she knew virtually all the prominent people, particularly the political men, of her day. As she recorded in her Autobiography, however, she refused to...
Friends, Associates
Anna Steele
Through her youngest sister AS
met many key figures of the day, including Irish Home-Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell
(Katherine O'Shea's long-term lover and eventual husband), and Justin McCarthy
, novelist and Irish Home-Rule MP...
Friends, Associates
Lady Caroline Lamb
LCL
was for most of her adult life a good friend of Sydney Morgan
, to whom she confided many stories of her childhood and youth, which Morgan preserved in her diaries. She later helped...
Friends, Associates
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
shared a candid literary correspondence with Edward Bulwer-Lytton
from early in her career until his death in 1873. To him she confided many of her anxieties about writing and her thoughts on other writers...
Friends, Associates
Barbarina Brand Baroness Dacre
BBBD
's circle of friends at this period of her life, many of them entertained by herself and her husband at the Hoo but many whose relationship with her went back to long before her...
Friends, Associates
L. E. L.
LEL
's friends Anna Maria Hall
, Katherine Thomson
, and Rosina Bulwer Lytton
defended her reputation against scandal. However, around the time of this broken engagement, Lytton began to credit her husband's account of...
Friends, Associates
Rosina Bulwer Lytton Baroness Lytton
Their mother was living in Paris at this time, and Rosina lived in London with her uncle Sir John Doyle
(latterly without her sister, who joined their mother in Paris). She reputedly had an unusual...