Bulwer-Lytton

[chris_gerrib]

Back in the day, Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a popular writer, easily as influential as his contemporary Charles Dickens. But now, all he's known for is opening a novel with the line "It was a dark and stormy night." Well, ratmmjess thinks Bulwer-Lytton is getting a bum rap. (Found via Making Light.)

Now, the article linked to is rather long, but Jess Nevins, the author, makes one point I'd like to reiterate. Namely, Bulwer-Lytton's writings haven't aged well. Consider "dark and stormy night." Modern readers are used to street lights, and so simply aren't aware of the relative "darkness" of nights. Bulwer-Lytton and his readers, used to gaslight, were.

"Relative darkness of night?" you say. It wasn't until I was in the Navy and went to sea that I gained an appreciation of night. Some nights, clear and moonlit, when my eyes were night-adapted I could read reports by moonlight. Others, cloudy and overcast, I couldn't see a damn thing. Even the light from a flashlight seemed to be sucked away as if by a sponge.

I guess the bottom line is that art, like everything else, is a product of its time.

Comments

Timeliness and Timelessness

[rodney-g-graves.livejournal.com]

Are two of the standards for a classic work of literature...

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Pertinent to the darkness of nights (and how our ancestors dealt with night as a concept and one of life's great challenges) is the book At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch. Although a little dry and more descriptive than analytical, it's still the best summary of the experience of night in pre-industrial times that I've ever seen.

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

Even for his time Bulwer-Lytton was overly florid. Sure nights were dark prior to widespread electrification, but they certainly weren't as over the top as he describes in the rest of the sentence.