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Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from the previous works of the author. It is the first of his writings in which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in illustration of amiable characters, it is the first, too, in which man has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in his repose at his own hearth, -- in a word, the greater part of the canvas has been devoted to t...

My grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux had two children by wedlock, -- both sons, at his death, my father, the younger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother, prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, and set out -- to join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwards surnamed le grand. In time I returned to my grandfather's estate, where, to the astonishment of my relations, my fate was now to be reversed, an...

From PELHAM to the PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE, from RIENZI to the LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, -- PAUL CLIFFORD is the only one in which a robber has been made the hero, or the peculiar phases of life which he illustrates have been brought into any prominent description. Without pausing to inquire what realm of manners or what order of crime and sorrow is open to art, and capable of administering to the proper ends of fiction, I may be permitted to observ...

You must often have felt, gentlemen, -- each and all of you, -- especially when sitting alone at night, a strange and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you, your blood curdles, and the heart stands still, the limbs shiver, the hair bristles, you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the room, you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at hand. Presently the whole spell, if I may so ca...

Pelham must find the real killer and clear the name of his friend to take the hand of the woman he loves . . . Pelham's a fine tale, but mostly it's remarkable as a classic "Fashionable Novel" -- in its day, the Fashionable Novel was a genre unto itself, focusing on the manners, habits and lifestyles of the Rich and Famous of the first half of the 19th century -- the jet set of its day. Pelham's sparkling cynicism makes fun of the genre as it ...

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Was Eugene Aram a murderer -- or an important part of our cultural heritage? Or was he both? Eugene Aram was the first to recognize that the Celtic languages were related to the other languages of Europe. In 1758, while at work on an Anglo-Celtic dictionary, he was arrested (and eventually hanged) for the murder, 14 years earlier, of his friend Daniel Clark. A hundred years later, Bulwer-Lytton wrote this book about the man, the contradiction,...

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An indistinct recollection of the very pretty little tale, called "The Bellows-Mender, " suggested the plot of this Drama. The incidents are, however, greatly altered from those in the tale, and the characters entirely re-cast.The play itself was composed with a twofold object. In the first place, sympathizing with the enterprise of Mr. Macready, as Manager of Covent Garden, and believing that many of the higher interests of the Drama were inv...

From the preface: Having long had a wish to illustrate certain periods of the French history, so, in the selection of the date in which the scenes of this play are laid, I saw that the era of the Republic was that in which the incidents were rendered most probable, in which the probationary career of the hero could well be made sufficiently rapid for dramatic effect, and in which the character of the time itself was depicted by the agencies ne...

The love story of Harold and Edith is told differently from the well-known legend, which implies a less pure connection. But the whole legend respecting the Edeva faira (Edith the fair) whose name meets us in the "Domesday" roll, rests upon very slight authority considering its popular acceptance, and the reasons for my alterations will be sufficiently obvious in a work intended not only for general perusal, but which on many accounts, I hope,...

This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship, and completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost simultaneously with EUGENE ARAM, and afforded to me at least some relief from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the other, yet they are alike in this -- that both attempt to deal with one of the most striking problems...

All that was once turbid, heating, unwholesome in the current of sentiment which flows through this history of a guilty passion, "Death's immortalizing winter" has chilled and purified. The book is now a harmless, and, it may be hoped, a not uninteresting, evidence of the precocity of its author's genius. As such, it is here reprinted.

I must own that I have but inadequately struggled against the great and obvious difficulty of representing an author living in our own times, with whose supposed works or alleged genius and those of anyone actually existing, the reader can establish no identification, and he is therefore either compelled constantly to humor the delusion by keeping his imagination on the stretch, or lazily driven to confound the Author IN the Book with the Auth...

The Tragicomedy of Court Intrigue, which had ever found its principal theater in Spain since the accession of the House of Austria to the throne, was represented with singular complication of incident and brilliancy of performance during the reign of Philip the Third. That monarch, weak, indolent, and superstitious, left the reins of government in the hands of the Duke of Lerma. The Duke of Lerma, in his turn, mild, easy, ostentatious, and sha...

To Henry Lytton Bulwer: ALLOW me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The greater part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages of Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we made together some years ago. Among the associations -- some sad and some pleasing -- connected with the general design, none are so agreeable to me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting between us, and whi...

The Last of the Barons has been by many esteemed the best of the Author's romances, and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character, and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand. It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced are very few, and, however prominent they m...

It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the gifts most peculiar to his genius, and repeate...

In this Novel of Night and Morning I have had various ends in view -- subordinate, I grant, to the higher and more durable morality which belongs to the Ideal, and instructs us playfully while it interests, in the passions, and through the heart. First -- to deal fearlessly with that universal unsoundness in social justice which makes distinctions so marked and iniquitous between Vice and Crime -- viz., between the corrupting habits and the vi...

It was the summer of the year 1491, and the armies of Ferdinand and Isabel invested the city of Granada. The night was not far advanced, and the moon, which broke through the transparent air of Andalusia, shone calmly over the immense and murmuring encampment of the Spanish foe, and touched with a hazy light the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada, contrasting the verdure and luxuriance which no devastation of man could utterly sweep from...