Authors

British · 1803–1873

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was one of the most successful British writers of the Victorian era — novelist, playwright, poet, and politician — whose works include The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Paul Clifford (1830), which begins with the sentence 'It was a dark and stormy night' (now famous as a cliché). He coined the phrases 'the pen is mightier than the sword' and 'the great unwashed.' His plays, including The Lady of Lyons (1838) and Richelieu (1839), were enormously successful and remained in the repertoire for decades.