Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George Earle (englisch)
author: Martina Lauster
created: 2005-06-05

Bulwer, Edward George Earl Lytton

Edward George Earl Lytton Bulwer (1803-1873, from 1843 Bulwer-Lytton), English writer and politician. His works (such as "The Last Days of Pompeii", "Rienzi" and "The Coming Race") ranked as international bestsellers of the nineteenth century. In Germany in the 1830s he was far and above the most translated and the most widely read English novelist. It was only as the 40s approached that Charles Dickens began to surpass him in popularity. Bulwers influence on German literature in the 30s and early 40s cannot be overestimated. In the twentieth century the translations by Arno Schmidt - and it is thanks to his efforts that Gutzkow too came to be re-discovered - drew the attention of the German reading public to the works of this author.

→ Pictures Gutzkows contemporaries

→ Pictures Gutzkows contemporaries (Bulwer in his dressing gown)

Notes on Bulwer's biography and works

His frequent changes of name point to Bulwer's social situation. Born into an aristocratic family, he gained a literary reputation at the end of the 1820s as Edward Lytton Bulwer. In the beginning he was forced to earn his living as a writer because, while his mother cut him off upon his marriage to the writer Rosina Wheeler, the young couple continued to live well above their means as stars in London 'Society'. But soon Bulwer became less dependent on his earnings as a writer. For his services as politician and author he was created baronet (Sir Edward) in 1843. When he inherited his mother's estate at Knebworth he adopted the double-barrelled Bulwer Lytton (usually written without the hyphen). In 1866 he was created baron, and, as a result, took his seat in the Lords. Thereafter he styled himself simply Lord Lytton in his published works. The longest productive period of his life is associated with the name Bulwer(-)Lytton, and it is under this name that he is also known outside Britain. In the following the name Bulwer is used for simplicity's sake. He is not be confused with his son, also a writer, the diplomat Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-1891), who was viceroy of India (1876-80) and published under the pen name Owen Meredith.

Bulwer's literary career is inseparably bound up with his activities as parliamentarian for at least seventeen years. An eleven-year interruption (1841-52) marks the break between his radical beginnings and then support for the Whigs, and his later activities as a Tory. He was for a short time (1858-59) Secretary for the Colonies in a conservative government. The politics of the later Bulwer seem relatively far removed from those of the young independent Member of Parliament who in 1832 helped steer the Reform Bill through the House. As Snyder has pointed out, however, this switch to conservatism is not to be viewed as some fundamental conversion, but rather as a shift of balance in his political thinking, which, for his entire life, was concerned with the relationship between freedom, morality and order. In this Bulwer concentrated on what was a central concern of the 19th century, i.e. the public sphere, even if his "History of the British Public", which he had planned from early on, remained unfinished (cf. Snyder, pp. 47, 49, 433). In a way similar to his fellow politicians and writers Henry Brougham and Benjamin Disraeli, but at the same time with a marked streak of the universal scholar, Bulwer worked and wrote as a 'public character' who combined writing and politics through public speaking and so became a key figure at the juncture where literature and politics intersect. (→ "Die Zeitgenossen", Globalkommentar: 6.1.2.1. Der 'öffentliche Charakter' ) As a result, there is scarcely a personality of significance in the literary or political field of the Victorian age whose biography does not reveal some point of contact with Bulwer.

Bulwer's literary output is characterised not only by high and well-nigh relentless levels of production, which ruined him physically (cf. Jauslin [1999], pp.131-133), but also by its enormous diversity. In the course of his life he wrote some thirty novels of the most varied types, a long series of stories, some dozen dramas both for the stage and the armchair, two works, each comprising many volumes, of cultural history and commentary on current affairs, an almost overwhelming number of essays, political writings, poems and verse epics, as well as a translation of the odes and epodes of Horace with an introduction and commentary and a still largely unknown translation of Schiller's poetry complete with a biographical essay.

What links his parliamentary and literary activity is journalism. In 1831-32 Bulwer worked in tandem as a Member of the House and as the editor of and contributor to the "New Monthly Magazine", and the result of these twin activities can be seen in the two-volume "England and the English" (1833). This monumental portrait of the nation, shot through with 'scenes' and 'sketches', concerns itself with the changes in society which the enactment of the Reform Bill of 1832 in part speeded up and in part continued to impede. At a later stage Bulwer also remained active as a journalist, especially in the 50s when he published in "Blackwoods Magazine", under the rubric "Caxtoniana", a series of essays entitled "Life, Literature and Manners" which coincide with the composition of the second and third volume of his Caxton trilogy. It may come as a surprise that Bulwer - unlike Dickens, for example - usually did not first publish his novels, except for the Caxton trilogy and his later novel "A Strange Story", in periodicals. This 'reticence' seems all the more puzzling in view of Bulwer's notorious flair for the new and the very latest, and his skill with modish or quite unusual genres. His early novels, especially "Pelham: or the Adventures of a Gentleman" (1828), belong, as do the novels of his contemporary Disraeli, to the genre of 'fashionable novels' which provide satirical portraits of the smart set in the metropolis. Through "Paul Clifford" (1830), "Eugene Aram" (1832) and "Godolphin" (1833), Bulwer also played his part in creating the genre of the prison or crime novel that has entered English literary history as 'Newgate' fiction. The same is true of his involvement in developing the panoramic social novel, a form Bulwer first explored in the historical or quasi archaeological vein in "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834; cf. Heinrich Laube's portrait of Bulwer , "Rienzi: the last of the Tribunes" (1835) - one of the models for Wagner's opera staged in 1842 -, complete with a full historiographic presentation in "Athens: Its Rise and Fall, with Views of the Literature, Philosophy and Social Life of the Athenian People" (1837). Towards the end of the 40s Bulwer became one of the first to create the panoramic novel set in the present (and he first published all such in "Blackwood's Magazine"): "The Caxtons: a Family Picture" (3 vols, 1849), followed by "My Novel. By Pisistratus Caxton: or Varieties in English Life" (4 vols, from 1851) and "What Will He Do With It? By Pisistratus Caxton" (4 vols, 1857-58), the last two newly translated by Arno Schmidt. Bulwer's discursive studies of society in the 30s, "England and the English" and "Athens" with their encyclopaedic characteristics, also point forward to a general development within the novel, which commences around 1850. As well as Bulwer, Thackeray and Dickens reveal this tendency in "Pendennis" (1848-50) and "Bleak House" (1852-53). (Cf. Jauslin [2000], esp. pp. 137-138) Finally, Bulwer still attracts attention today as the author of the novel "Zanoni" (1842) with its occult themes, and also on account of his science fiction novel "The Coming Race" (1871).

His personal success as a professional writer did not prevent him (nor, indeed, for that matter Gutzkow) from strongly supporting the concept of legal protection for such a career. The suicide of Douglas Jerrold's friend Laman Blanchard, who had to make a living with his pen, renewed Bulwer's efforts in 1846 to highlight the plight of the full-time writer (cf. Trodd, p. 78) , having supported, from the very beginning of his parliamentary career, the introduction of copyright for plays and the abolition of censorship, and having even chaired the relevant parliamentary committee without, however, achieving the desired result (cf. Snyder, pp. 36-37).

Counteracting the growing specialisation of knowledge in the nineteenth century, Bulwer personifies the encyclopaedic man of letters, for this term (like the French 'lettres') indicates exactly the sphere in which this author is at home: where knowledge fuses into text, into literature. Such 'letters' absorb the attention and creative energy of a type also known as 'literary character' in whom person and work cannot be kept separate. On the contrary, both are, in equal measure, marked out by comprehensive literary knowledge which is a knowledge of letters (cf. Jauslin [1999], p. 133). This unity of 'character' and 'works' means that the 'works' are not to be judged in accordance with literary categories alone. But that is the practice of conventional literary history which ranks Bulwer, the eminently 'literary' writer, amongst the second or third-rate Victorian novelists.

His aristocratic status, his dandyish public appearance, his spectacular and catastrophic marriage and divorce, his immense breadth of reading, his claim to universality, which some found arrogant, together with his at times dominant position in the book market and in literary life, - these factors frequently exposed Bulwer to violent and wounding criticism. He was cast as a representative of an aristocratic and decadent era by now passé, and the dressing gown which he allegedly wore to write was marked down as the very opposite of bourgeois masculinity. To the forefront of this campaign was the self-styled organ of 'common sense', "Fraser's Magazine"; see the portrait of Bulwer in the journal's "Gallery of Literary Characters" of 1832, consisting of a plate showing Bulwer in his dressing gown, after a drawing by Daniel Maclise, and an accompanying satirical text by William Maginn. "Fraser's" attacks on Bulwer soon attracted the supporting voice of Thomas Carlyle and later that of the young William Makepeace Thackeray. Carlyle drew substantial inspiration from the criticism of Bulwer in "Fraser's" for his satirical treatment of clothes, fashion and the way of the world in his "Sartor Resartus", which appeared in that journal in 1833-34. (For the treatment of the attacks on dandyism in "Fraser's" directed against Bulwer, as well as Thackeray's attacks on Bulwer which were similarly motivated, see Moers, pp. 167-214.) As a result of these attacks Bulwer cut or altered all such 'offensive' passages in the second edition (1835) of his dandy novel "Pelham" (cf. Moers, pp. 78-81). Thackeray owes his literary rise as a critic (and would-be dandy), as well as the formulation of his bourgeois-realist aesthetic, to his merciless and parodying critique of Bulwer, which went on for decades, and which so wounded the latter that he reworked those books which had been parodied (cf. Trodd, esp. pp. 71-74).

Bulwer and Germany

The extraordinary popularity of Bulwer's work in Germany may be accounted for by its affinity to the German educational ideal, but also by its deviation from the unpractical German type of education for its own sake. This supposition is, at any rate, confirmed by Hieronymus Lorm's judgement of 1876: "Despite the limits to his poetic talent, Bulwer, for the Germans, represented an ideal, for he was what they valued most, a scholar, and of a kind they were looking for in vain in their own homeland, that is to say, an elegant and versatile scholar, a graceful man of the world." (Quoted from Zipser, pp. 13-14) Laube, too (pp. 367-369 ), singles out in 1835 the 'light touch' and 'smoothness' with which Bulwer can present his almost 'German' 'humanitarianism' nurtured on education and learning: "Even though devoid of brilliance and magic, his mode of presentation is smooth and deft, and all is bathed in fine wisdom. Eugene Aram, for example, is one of most beautiful, most wisely drawn characters of any novel. The highest level of human accomplishment, of inspired humanity is embodied in him, and all that he speaks is pure as molten gold. [...] What is most striking about him is his comprehensive education. Everything attests surprising, wide-ranging knowledge, careful, indeed subtle observation, a gentle, purified humanity, so that I cannot help availing myself, as I have already done above, of an often-used but nonetheless valuable German term when I say, all radiates 'Weisheit' (wisdom)." Levin Schücking phrased his assessment in a less explicit, but similar way in the "Telegraph für Deutschland" in 1838 ( p. 1522 ). For him Bulwer "possesses the wittiest, most lively gift of depiction, in no way weakened by the weight of the most comprehensive knowledge of the sort we might only demand of a learned German professor." Bulwer was, in fact, far more attuned to Germany - that is to say, to what educated Britons perceived to be the particular characteristics of German culture - than most of his German readers and even one of his translators, Louis Lax, were aware. The latter maintained that Bulwer could not speak "a word of German" and was generally "less bothered about our Fatherland than we about his" (see "Die Zeitgenossen", Dokumente zur Rezeptionsgeschichte, Nr. 3 ). Used as he was to dedicating his works to famous contemporaries, Bulwer made an exception with "Ernest Maltravers" in 1837. Its dedication reads: "To the great German people, a race of thinkers and of critics; a foreign but familiar audience, profound in judgement, candid in reproof, generous in appreciation"; cf. Schücking's comments on this .

Zipser sees Bulwer's success with the German public as a result of the author being so well-read in German literature and philosophy and of his fascination with certain romantic clichés. He detects, amongst other things, the German influence in the 'mystical' elements pervading Bulwer's works (pp. 14, 19-22). His romance "The Pilgrims of the Rhine", modelled on the 'Kunstmärchen' of German Romanticism and described by Sadleir as 'fondant-fiction at its worst' (p. 305), seems to bear this out most clearly (note Laube's description of the work as a charming, but unoriginal mimicry ["Anempfindung"] of German culture). In a brief review of this 'consumptive' work, in which the heroine dies of tuberculosis, Gutzkow can only find praise for the attractive finish of the book and for the quality of Le Petit's translation - an indication of quality in itself, given the otherwise sloppily translated and cheaply produced 'burlap' editions which constituted the world of literature in translation in Germany ( Literaturkritiken ). Yet even (or maybe precisely) a slight work such as "Die Pilger vom Rhein" sold excellently. In 1834 alone, the year of publication, six different editions appeared in translation, two in the original English, and two extracts in journals (cf. Lindenstruth, pp. 51-52). - What also left lasting traces in Bulwer's work was Rosicrucian mysticism. Here one could mention the 'occult' novels "Zanoni" (1842) and "A Strange Story" (1862). Bulwer, allegedly a member of the secret society of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, may indeed have joined it during his second visit to Germany in 1840, even though there had been a British branch of the Order since the seventeenth century (cf. Zipser, pp. 22, 123-150, Nelson Stewart, pp. 22-23).

But it was as an enlightened idealist that Bulwer was bound most closely to the German tradition. His knowledge of the works of Goethe and Schiller was not in itself exceptional, given that a familiarity with German Classicism and Romanticism had been something taken for granted by the educated British public since, say, the 1820s (cf. esp. Ashton and Schirmer; for Bulwer's appreciation of Goethe cf. Zipser, pp. 33-122). In addition, his receptive attitude towards German 'Idealism' as a counterbalance to the 'materialism' and 'anti-intellectualism' which he encountered in his homeland let us see Bulwer as a link in a chain, as an important representative within that critique of English culture that stretches from Thomas Carlyle to Matthew Arnold. What is, however, striking is Bulwer's relationship to the philosophical reflectivity of Schiller. In 1844 he published his translations of Schiller's poetry, "The Poems and Ballads of Schiller", introduced by "A Brief Sketch of Schiller's Life", which, despite its heralded brevity, runs to more than one hundred pages. In one respect, Bulwer's Germanophilia clearly transcended the tolerance level of his countrymen, i.e. in what Trodd describes as his "daring flirtation with a new morality" (p. 71). This would be unthinkable without the backdrop of Goethe's immoralism which was, at the time, still frowned upon by the reading public in England. The behaviour of Bulwer's hero-criminal Eugene Aram in the eponymous novel of 1832 is 'Faustian'. The convicted murderer, although not himself guilty of the victim's death, justifies the motive for his deed as the drive for absolute knowledge in the service of humanity: "Is it not for the service of man that thou shouldst for once break the law on behalf of that knowledge from which all laws take their source?" (Eugene Aram, p. 332). This amoral urge for knowledge is explicitly associated with Goethe's "Faust": "Every one knows that sublime discontent - that chafing at the bounds of human knowledge - that yearning for the intellectual Paradise beyond, which 'the sworded angel' forbids us to approach - that daring, yet sorrowful state of mind - that sense of defeat, even in conquest, which Goethe has embodied - a picture of the loftiest grief of which the soul is capable [...]." (Eugene Aram, p. 103) It seems significant that it is precisely "Eugene Aram" that won Laube's fulsome praise - even though the translation he had to hand was very probably not the 'uncensored' first edition - and that this novel was also reworked by Ludwig Rellstab as a play, and this in turn was positively reviewed by Gutzkow (Literaturkritiken). It has also been noted that the morally provocative "Pelham" has its roots in the Goethean 'Bildungsroman' (cf. Moers, p. 53). In 1838 Bulwer told his friend John Forster how much he delighted in the finesse of Goethe's "Elective Affinities" and how incapable the British public was of appreciating such reading (cf. Zipser, footnote 128 to section 1).

The importance of Bulwer for Gutzkow

In light of the fact that Gutzkow published "Die Zeitgenossen" (Our Contemporaries) in 1837 as an alleged translation "From the English of E. L. Bulwer" ("Die Zeitgenossen", serial title referring to Bulwer's works in German translation ), his discussion and dealings with his alter ego and his work are few, even disappointing. This is a fairly definite indication of how strong their affinity was and therefore also of the degree to which Gutzkow saw Bulwer as his competitor. This aspect of affinity is thoroughly dealt with in the global commentary to "Die Zeitgenossen"; in addition, the documents to the genesis and reception of this work contain comments by Gutzkow relating to the publication of "Die Zeitgenossen" under the cover of Bulwer's name which are not taken into account here.

Ironically enough, one of the most revealing references to Bulwer can be found in "Die Zeitgenossen" itself, a serial work appearing roughly every two months, and this at a stage where Gutzkow was maintaining the fiction of Bulwer as author solely on the title page. In the chapter "Kunst und Literatur" ("Die Zeitgenossen", vol. 2, pp. 236-292) Gutzkow distinguishes three types of the modern novel, the historical novel, the character portrait and the speculative novel, and values this last the most highly. The achievement of having introduced the speculative element into the novel, that element concerned with the ideas and the 'seething' forces of the age, goes to the French and the (Young) Germans, while in contrast Gutzkow sees the English (and this ever includes Walter Scott) as the typical painters of history and genre pictures within the sphere of prose. "Leaving behind the historical novel, which dwelt in the past, they suddenly plunged into the immediate present and depicted, much after the fashion of English ladies, everything possible that they could snatch from the present. These genre painters depicted for us high society and low society, the salons and the streets, the casinos and the low drinking dens. The man of fashion, the dandy, the feeble, the paunchy, the lean and the fat man, - these were characters, or, rather, caricatures, briefly sketched on the wall. Coachmen and servants, street-sweepers and showmen, grisettes and flower girls, actresses and critics, why even the dogs of Paris were sketched by this type of genre literature. / The linking together of all these portraits and the turning of them into lithographs was but the smallest of steps. The life of a fop provided a novel. There followed memoirs of one disenchanted, of one disinherited, and so on, by whatever striking title this sort of stuff was advertised. The most expert in this sphere was the now half-forgotten Bulwer . He has been dislodged by the sailors, the captains on half-pay, the pensioners of the East India Company. Their likes are now writing, exploiting sunshine, wet weather, storm and rain, mountain and valley and with their undeniable talent are gradually reducing the highest peaks to flatlands. Ever since the English manufacturers have had less to do as woollen and cotton goods started to pile up in the warehouses, the literary machines of England, driven by coal-fired steam engines, have been flooding the Continent with their mediocre products." Leaving aside the fact that Gutzkow is here also quite clearly mocking the Parisian literature of sketches, this mockery strikes at the very core of his own project of "Die Zeitgenossen" in its attempt to construct a comprehensive image of the century out of precisely such typifying, caricaturing character sketches. Gutzkow admits that Bulwer and the Parisians were models for this project in the Preface to "Novellen" , as well as in his "Rückblicke auf mein Leben" . In "Die Zeitgenossen", it is precisely fashion and the "life of a fop" that are repeatedly focused on as typical. The 'enfant du siècle', the 'Émile' of the nineteenth century, obtains his entry ticket to society by means of his fashionable clothes (see "Die Zeitgenossen", Globalkommentar, 6.1.3.4. Die Mode ). A novel such as Bulwer's "Pelham", which reflects this phenomenon to a very high degree, provides Gutzkow with the analytical key for his portrait of the century. Gutzkow's dismissal of Bulwer, of whom he states in "Rückblicke auf mein Leben" that his "manner" did "not appeal" to him, is something very much tied in with the growing competition which arose for this German author because of the masses of English literature appearing in translation (cf. in this context "Die Deutschen Uebersetzungsfabriken" (The German Translation Factories) , a text which, amongst other things, gives some indications as to who might be meant by the furiously scribbling 'sailors, captains and pensioners of the East India Company' [ note on 2,9 ]). In the essay "Vergangenheit und Gegenwart" (Past and Present), which appeared towards the end of 1838, Gutzkow, however, throughly revised his judgement of Bulwer the novelist. There he writes of contemporary German literature: "As far as the novel is concerned, it is striking that Walter Scott, Cooper, George Sand and Balzac have all been imitated, but not Bulwer. We seem to be lacking in our understanding as regards the experience of the world and the insight into man which this Englishman possesses; at best, the unknown figure from across the Atlantic (Sealsfield) [Charles Sealsfield; pseudonym of Karl Postl] can compare to him." (p. 103) In Gutzkow's reviews of Bulwer, however, which for the most part deal with plays or dramatic adaptations, a lukewarm to downright negative judgement prevails. If any praise is expressed, it does not relate to the author, but to the quality of the acting.

Gutzkow only reviewed Bulwer's work five times, and in each case only briefly ( Literaturkritiken ). Besides the comments on "The Pilgrims of the Rhine" in the literary section of "Phönix" (1835), which only refer to Bulwer's story with the epithet 'consumptive', there are two reviews of Ludwig Rellstab's stage adaptation of "Eugene Aram", performed at the Hamburg Stadttheater ("Telegraph für Deutschland", 1839 and 1840 ), as well as two fillers under the headings "Kleine Chronik" and "Miscellen" in the "Telegraph für Deutschland" (1838 and 1841), and these can scarcely be called reviews. Both are concerned with Bulwer's new plays. "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) is dealt with sympathetically , even if the emphasis is not on the play itself, but on the Hamburg production. Bulwer's successful comedy "Money" (1840), however, which is still staged today, most recently in the London National Theatre in 1999, is summarily ripped to shreds , not on the basis of a production which Gutzkow himself had seen, but merely on the basis of accounts in the British press. And not only that, Bulwer's entire activity as a dramatist is dismissed, and it is suggested that he should stick to narrative prose. This betrays a very strong sense of financial and professional envy on the part of the prose writer Gutzkow who had just tried his hand in the field of drama with some success, and therefore had every reason to fear that Bulwer, who was now writing for the stage (and being handsomely remunerated for it in his home country), would once more jam a spoke in his wheel. Nevertheless, Gutzkow concedes that this cannot be held against his rival, since he is also dependent on his earnings as a writer. The extremely superficial comments about "Money", which do not deal with the play itself at all, conceal a most definite give-away, however, for it is this drama which served as template for Gutzkow's own play, "Die Schule der Reichen" (The School of the Rich), first staged eight months later on 25 October, 1841 (Rasch 15/4; cf. also Price, p. 401).

The fact that Gutzkow had nothing at all to say about Bulwer in the 1850s has its very good reason. Price pointed out a considerable time ago that it was Julian Schmidt, Gutzkow's arch enemy, who had spotted the affinity between the object of his attacks and Bulwer. For Schmidt, Gutzkow's panoramic novel "Die Ritter vom Geiste" (Knights of the Spirit) is, to all intents and purposes, the German equivalent of Bulwer's dandy novels. Schmidt singles out an elitist attitude as the most prominent feature of the characters in Gutzkow and in Bulwer, and in so doing describes not just the learned discourse of their literature, but the author type as well, the 'literary character', neither of which can be reconciled with Schmidt's own concept of Realism. Schmidt rebukes Gutzkow for his pretension to analytic investigation and to universality, that inheritance of the oppositional 1830s which he claims is no longer up to date. In his view, all it represents is the frivolous ambitions of an unbourgeois type - precisely the tone of the attacks which Thackeray levelled against Bulwer. The light Bulwer and Gutzkow cast mutually on one another thus even includes their contemporary criticism, and it is this criticism that has decisively contributed to posterity's failure to appreciate the one as well as the other.

Apart from Jauslin (2000) and Lauster, it is only Price who has examined the affinity between Gutzkow and Bulwer. Price sees this affinity in the way both authors together reach back to narrative forms from, predominantly, English literature of the eighteenth century (cf. pp, 405-406, 410, 415). This might also be the reason why both, whilst stressing that their aim is to enlighten readers, at the same time incorporate gothic clichés (cf. Sadleir, pp. 312-317, Göbel passim). Jauslin (1999) has, in turn, pointed to the affinity between Arno Schmidt and Bulwer (and therefore, to a degree, Gutzkow) in their "fondness for literary models taken from light fiction", models that "provide the scaffolding for the novel, which is crammed, as it were, with 'quotation', and this, of course, alters its meaning. For this principle of 'quotation' has as its basis the fact that literature is generated from literature" (p. 134). Implausible plot elements and garish effects would thus constitute the cheap set pieces through which the capital contained in the content, Enlightenment lore garnered from literature and transmuted into literature, can be effectively circulated. (On the importance for Gutzkow and Bulwer of the moralist tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries see "Die Zeitgenossen", Globalkommentar: 6.1.3.1. Sittengeschichte als moderne Moralistik ).

The highly fissured relationship to the female sex and to egalitarian movements, which Gutzkow shares with Bulwer, can, no doubt, be explained in part by the limits of Enlightenment discourse. Bulwer's late novel "The Coming Race" (1871; his contribution to the genre of science fiction which was then just at its beginning), and "The Parisians" (unfinished and published posthumously) are both concerned with what the author viewed as dangerous tendencies of the nineteenth century, and these are socialist materialism, feminism and the classless society that the full control of nature might render possible. From a modern feminist standpoint it comes as no surprise that the liberal humanists fears concerning the technical consequences of precisely that knowledge on whose behalf he had fought all his life, should include the fear of the female 'other'. Totally technologised society and matriarchy signify the failure of that control which was guaranteed for centuries by male-dominated humanist culture. The notion of the emancipated woman, half to be feared, half to be wished for, who points the way to the man now left in the lurch by Reason, also marks an interesting point of comparison with Gutzkow, especially when one considers his comments on female emancipation in his fantasy piece "Literarische Elfenschicksale" (Fates of the Literary Elves), published under this title in the "Telegraph" in 1838 and in 1839 in "Skizzenbuch" as "Die literarischen Elfen" (The Literary Elves; Rasch 2.19.9).

If having a partner of equal or, indeed, superior wit and intelligence was one of Gutzkow's dreams, then Bulwer, who was married to just such a woman, was an even far less happy husband than Gutzkow. The spectacle of his failed marriage contributed not a little to his reputation as an eccentric. He was found 'difficult', and despite all his sociability, recognition and admiration, he remained a man without friends. A rupture in relations threatened with even such a close and true confidant as John Forster when the latter fell asleep during a reading of one of Bulwer's plays. Bulwers vanity, like that of Gutzkow, seemed to know no bounds even with friendly allies. This shared characteristic may perhaps be seen as a psychological reflection of the role of 'public character', of one even whose private life has become a public show.

Bulwer's Papers

Hertfordshire County Record Office. Here can be found the manuscripts of most of the novels, complete or in part, the manuscripts of many other works (even incomplete works) and a collection of many hundred letters.

Bibliographies

The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Vol. 4: 1800-1900. Ed. by Joanne Shattock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, cols 1144-1160.

Edward Bulwer Lytton. Eine Bibliographie der Veröffentlichungen im deutschen Sprachraum. Zusammengestellt von Gerhard Lindenstruth . Giessen: Lindenstruth, 2001 (unchanged reprint of the first edition of 1994).

Biographies

Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton , 1st Earl: The Life, Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. By his Son. 2 vols, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1883.

[Victor Alexander George Robert Lytton , 2nd Earl]: The Life of Edward Bulwer, first Lord Lytton. By his Grandson, the Earl of Lytton. 2 vols, London: Macmillan, 1913.

The Earl of Lytton , K.G.: Bulwer-Lytton. London:Home & Van Thal, 1948.

Michael Sadleir : Bulwer and his Wife. A Panorama. 1803-1836. New edition, London: Constable, 1933. (First published in 1931 under the title "Edward and Rosina 1803-1836". This is the first volume of a projected three-volume biography, "Bulwer. A Panorama", which remained unfinished).

Work editions

Only important editions in English are listed here. For further information, including part-editions and American editions, see "The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature" (→ Bibliographies), col. 1145. The editions in German translation are listed in the commentary of "Die Zeitgenossen" (Quellen, Folien, Anspielungshorizonte: Gattungsfolien ).

Works of Sir E. L. Bulwer. 10 vols, London: Saunders & Otley, 1840.

[Lord Lytton's Works.] The Knebworth Edition. 37 vols, London, New York: Routledge, 1873-77.

[Lord Lytton's Works.] New Knebworth Edition. 29 vols, London: Routledge, 1895-98.

Sources

William Bates : Edward Lytton Bulwer. In: idem, The Maclise Portrait Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters. With Memoirs Biographical, Critical, Bibliographical, and Anecdotal Illustrative of the Literature of the Former Half of the Present Century. A New Edition with Eighty-five Portraits. London: Chatto & Windus, 1898. Pp. 125-133.

George Gilfillan : Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer. In: idem, A Gallery of Literary Portraits. London: Dent; New York: Dutton, n.d. [1909?]. Pp. 216-228.

Heinrich Laube : Edward Lytton Bulwer. In: idem: Moderne Charakteristiken. 2 vols, Mannheim: Löwenthal, 1835. Vol. 2, pp. 355-379. (Archiv: Quellen )

L[ouis] L [ ax ]: Deutsche Literatur. In: Westliche Blätter für Unterhaltung, Kunst, Literatur und Leben, no. 2, 3 July 1837, pp. 5-6 (Rasch 14/14.37.07.03). ( Die Zeitgenossen , Dokumente zur Rezeptionsgeschichte, Rezensionen, Nr. 3 )

The Right Hon. Lord Lytton : Eugene Aram. A Tale. London, Glasgow, New York: Routledge, 1887 (The Pocket Volume Edition of Lord Lytton's Novels).

Ned Culpepper, the Tomahawk [William Maginn ]: Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer's Novels; and Remarks on Novel-Writing. In: Fraser's Magazine, vol. 1, no. 5 (June 1830), pp. 509-532.

[Gustav Pfizer ]: Die Zeitgenossen. Ihre Schicksale, ihre Tendenzen, ihre großen Charaktere. Aus dem Englischen des E. L. Bulwer . Erste und zweite Lieferung. Stuttgart, Verlag der Classiker. 1837. 16. 8 Gr. In: Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung. No 120, 30 April 1837, pp. 485-486 (Rasch 14/14.37.04.30). ("Die Zeitgenossen", Dokumente zur Rezeptionsgeschichte, Rezensionen, Nr. 1 )

Levin Schücking : Bulwers neueste Schriften. In: Telegraph für Deutschland, no. 191, [29] November, 1838, pp. 1521-1524; no. 192, [30] November, 1838, pp. 1529-1533.

Secondary literature

Rosemary Ashton : The German Idea. Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Walter Göbel : Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Systemreferenz, Funktion, literarischer Wert in seinem Erzählwerk. Heidelberg: Winter, 1993.

Kurt Jauslin : "Aber auch zum Lesen gehört Virtuosität". Lesarten des Panoramatischen in "Die Ritter vom Geiste". In: Roger Jones, Martina Lauster (eds): Karl Gutzkow. Liberalismus - Europäertum - Modernität. Bielefeld: Aithesis, 2000. Pp. 121-148.

Kurt Jauslin : Ein Mann des Tages. Der dritte Essay über Bulwer. In: Zettelkasten 18. Aufsätze und Arbeiten zum Werk Arno Schmidts. Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft der Arno-Schmidt-Leser 1999. Ed. by Friedhelm Rathjen. Wiesenbach: Bangert & Metzler, 1999. Pp. 121-154.

Christopher Lane : Bulwer's Misanthropes and the Limits of Victorian Sympathy. In: Victorian Studies. Bloomington, Indiana. Vol. 44, no. 4 (Summer 2002), pp. 597-624.

Martina Lauster : Moden und Modi des Modernen. Der frühe Gutzkow als Essayist. In: Forum Vormärz Forschung Jahrbuch. Bielefeld. Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 59-95.

Ellen Moers : The Dandy. Brummell to Beerbohm. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. (Reprint of original edition New York: Viking Press, 1960).

Lawrence M. Price : Karl Gutzkow and Bulwer Lytton. In: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Champaign, Illinois. Vol. 16, 1917, pp. 397-415.

Walter F. Schirmer : Der Einfluß der deutschen Literatur auf die englische im 19. Jahrhundert. Halle/S.: Niemeyer, 1947.

Charles W. Snyder : Liberty and Morality. A Political Biography of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. New York etc.: Lang, 1995.

C. Nelson Stewart : Bulwer Lytton as Occultist. Reprint Kila, Montana n.d. (Original n.d., ca. 1927).

Anthea Trodd : Michael Angelo Titmarsh and the Knebworth Apollo. In: Peter L. Shillingsburg (ed.): Costerus. Essays in English and American Literature. New Series. vol. 2: Thackeray. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1974. Pp. 59-81.

Richard A. Zipser : Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Germany. Bern, Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1974.

(Martina Lauster, Exeter; English translation R. J. Kavanagh)