FinermanWorks

Today is the 205th birthday of the unfortunate Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It is fashionable to ridicule him
as the worst writer in the history of English. In fact, he was quite popular in his day. Judging from the frequent remakes of his novel “The Last Days of Pompeii” , he might have been a best-selling writer today.

One of his passages is cited as an exemplar of horrible writing. Here it is:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

I don’t think that it is terrible at all. Yes, it is florid and overwrought: in other words, typically Victorian.

The greatest of the Victorian writers Charles Dickens would have been just as lavish with adjectives. And his opening scene would have included a colorful lamplighter who would reappear throughout the story, at the most incredible times, with remarkable revelations for the hero. “Many the year ago, before I become a magistrate, I was a lamplighter. One day, while making me rounds, I discovered a foundling. How wert I to know it was me long-lost sister’s child? Which makes you my nephew and ‘eir.”

I really don’t understand why Bulwer-Lytton has become the object of such ridicule. Perhaps he should have given Mt. Vesuvius an endearing cockney accent.