Edward Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist, poet, playwright and politician. He wrote in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, and science fiction. Bulwer-Lytton's literary works were highly popular and bestselling novels at the time. Novels & Novellas: The Last Days of Pompeii The Pilgrims of the Rhine Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes Falkland Pelham The Disowned Devereux Paul Clifford Eugene Aram Godolphin Asmodeus at Large Ernest Maltravers Alice, or The Mysteries (A sequel to Ernest Maltravers) Calderon, the Courtier Leila, or The Siege of Granada Zicci: A Tale (A prequel to Zanoni) Zanoni Night and Morning The Last of the Barons Lucretia Harold, the Last of the Saxons The Caxtons: A Family Picture A Strange Story My Novel, or Varieties in English Life The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain What Will He Do With It? The Coming Race, or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race Kenelm Chillingly The Parisians Pausanias, the Spartan Short Stories: The Incantation The Brothers Historical Works: Athens: Its Rise and Fall Plays: The Lady of Lyons, or Love and Pride Poetry

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist, poet, playwright and politician. He wrote in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, and science fiction. Bulwer-Lytton's literary works were highly popular and bestselling novels at the time. Excerpt: "You are mistaken, my dear Monkton! Your description of the gaiety of "the season" gives me no emotion. You speak of pleasure; I remember no labour so wearisome; you enlarge upon its changes; no sameness appears to me so monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship..."

An examination of Carroll's books about Alice explores the contextual knowledge of the time period in which it was written, addressing such topics as time, games, mathematics, and taxonomies.

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton was born on May 25th, 1803 the youngest of three sons. When Edward was four his father died and his mother moved the family to London. As a child he was delicate and neurotic and failed to fit in at any number of boarding schools. However, he was academically and creatively precocious and, as a teenager, he published his first work; Ishmael and Other Poems in 1820. In 1822 he entered university at Cambridge and in 1825 he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse for Sculpture. The following year he received his B.A. degree and printed, for private circulation, the small volume of poems, Weeds and Wild Flowers. During his career he was to be extremely prolific and write across a number of genres; historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, and science fiction as well as poetry. In 1828 his novel, Pelham, brought him an income, as well as a commercial and critical reputation. The books intricate plot and humorous, intimate portrayals kept many a gossip busy trying to pair up public figures with characters in the book. Bulwer-Lytton reached, perhaps, the height of his popularity with the publication of Godolphin (1833), followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes (1835), and Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848). In 1841, he started the Monthly Chronicle, a semi-scientific magazine. The Victorian era was filled with many magazines and periodicals all of whom had a great fascination to chronicle and publish the many things that the Empire and Industrial Revolution were discovering, inventing and changing. In 1858 he entered Lord Derby's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies. He took an active interest in the development of the Crown Colony of British Columbia and wrote with great passion to the Royal Engineers upon assigning them their duties there. In 1866 Bulwer-Lytton was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in the County of Hertford but his passion for politics now somewhat dimmed. Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered with a disease of the ear and for the last two or three years of his life he lived in Torquay nursing his health. An operation to cure his deafness resulted in an abscess forming in his ear which later burst. Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton endured intense pain for a week and died at 2am on January 18th, 1873, in Torquay, just short of his 70th birthday.

That owner was the younger of the ladies seated by the window. You would scarcely have guessed, from her appearance, that she was more than seven or eight and twenty, though she exceeded by four or five years that critical boundary in the life of beauty. Her form was slight and delicate in its proportions, nor was her countenance the less lovely because, from its gentleness and repose (not unmixed with a certain sadness) the coarse and the gay might have thought it wanting in expression. For there is a stillness in the aspect of those who have felt deeply, which deceives the common eye,—as rivers are often alike tranquil and profound, in proportion as they are remote from the springs which agitated and swelled the commencement of their course, and by which their waters are still, though invisibly, supplied.

Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.