Portrait by Henry William Pickersgill
Five Reasons Everyone Should Know Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton | Interesting Literature.
I found this article at http://www.interestingliterature.wordpress.com just a few minutes ago. Though the article does not deal with horror per se, the article will be of interest to horror aficionados (especially horror-historians) because for a short time Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton was one of the more famous writers of horror during the nineteenth century. His work of horror, “The House and the Brain”, is mentioned in Lovecraft’s famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”. Lovecraft said of Bulwer-Lytton:
“At this time a wave of interest in spiritualistic charlatanry, mediumism, Hindoo theosophy, and such matters, much like that of the present day, was flourishing; so that the number of weird tales with a ‘psychic” or pseudoscientific basis became very considerable. For a number of these the prolific and popular Edward Bulwer-Lytton was responsible; and despite the large doses of turgid rhetoric and empty romanticism in his products, his success in the weaving of a certain kind of bizarre charm cannot be denied.”
Lovecraft goes on to discuss with some degree of praise three of Bulwer-Lytton’s works: the short story “The House and the Brain” and the novels Zanoni and A Strange Story. I read “The House and the Brain” some time back and found it an interesting story (though a little long) and even riveting in some parts. It is about a man who decides to spend the night in a haunted house where no one has been able to stay for very long because it is inhabited by terrifying apparitions. True to the style of many nineteenth-century stories, the intrepid protagonist finds something of a scientific explanation behind the haunting. It is definitely worth reading.
I have mentioned Bulwer-Lytton and some of the things for which he is famous in my previous post “The Best Literary Facts from the Twitterverse”, which was also reposted from http://www.interestingliterature.wordpress.com. You might want to check it out for a few additional facts.
Thoughts? Comments?
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 