Have you read 'Zanoni'? And do you relish the gathering up of dropped (or strewed) Platonisms, & forming them into such a crown of glory, - of holy radiance, as the moral of that book? Nothing wd. beforehand have persuaded me that such an allegory as that wd. be given us in our day, - though I had caught glimpses in Bulwer's mind of higher powers & better thoughts than he had been used to give out. But this book is such a spring above all his former efforts - such a soaring - as has surprised me: - & others, to judge by the pertinacity of some people in declaring that he cd. not have meant the allegory we hold between our hands; - a thing they might as well say of the maker of a clock, or a county map.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'This book has helped me incalculably in surmounting coterie-notions of the nature of another life, as well as of the objects of this.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'I do not defend the bad construction of his story. I lament it, & can only wonder what bewitches us all, - us story-makers, - that we cannot make a story, - Boz, Bulwer, myself & others - while some excel in that particular art whom we do not at all envy in other respects.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
[Thackeray] 'Cd not endure Bulwer - no nature - nor Dickens - yet mentioned with greatest praise the Chap: before death of little Dombey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson Print: Book
'Since seeing Captain Blackwood yesterday I have read over 'Night and Morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
'Thank you very much for the Magazine - I am charmed with "St Stephen's". It is Sir Edward's, of course.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
'How delightful are Sir Edward's Essays. One seems to see his own special creation, the accomplished man of the world, not entirely worldly, a quintessence of social wisdom and experience, sweetened by imagination'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
'That fall [Maud Montgomery] was enthralled by a book called "Zanoni", an occult love story written by an English nobleman named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. She read and re-read "Zanoni"... until she knew whole chunks of it by heart... She was so in love with its dark, masterful hero that she actually spent hours rewriting some of Lord Lytton's story so that the heroine's dialogue and behaviour would read more like dialogue and behaviour that would be hers if she were "Zanoni"'s heroine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
'I have begun Bulwer's Rienzi, wishing to examine his treatment of an historical subject'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
'Stopped at home all the evening really fascinated with Bulwer's "My Novel", got in fact so excited with the story that I became unable quietly to read on regularly, but leaving the details for another time gloated over the plot, and the Finish.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Came home read a little of my Novel smoked a Cigar and went quietly to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Spent the evening at home reading "Night & Morning".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'i have read Bulwer's "Rienzi" and yours also. I always thought your tragedy the best of your works, and I think so still. It is a glorious thing. I like Bulwer's too, very much, but unless there were historical ground for the love between a Colonna and the family of Rienzi, he has injured his work by the introduction. It is so palpably an imitation of the tragedy and with much less effect...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
'I have been reading with much encreased admiration Paul Clifford - It is a wonderful, a sublime book - What will Bulwer become? the first Author of the age? I do not doubt it - he is a magnificent writer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 January 1846:
'I forgot quite to quarrel with you a little about Sir E Lytton Bulwer [sic] -- because indeed I dislike his dissertation on cold water as much as anything I have read lately. I [italics]know[end italics] the Malvern Hills, you will be reminded -- & when I think of that peculiar climate where people with delicate chests stand upon the mountain-slopes (such a beautiful country!) & breathe razors [...] I do marvel that any man of common sense can keep his countenance & recommend that situation as a substitute for Italy & Madeira to pulmonary patients [comments further on same subject].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
'In the evening Polly was so deeply interested in a ghost story written by Lord Lytton & said to be the foundation of a "Strange Story" by that nobleman that she left everything go to the bad'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Castieau Print: Unknown
'Early in 1888 my grandmother was taken ill, and my sister Mary and I went daily to Albert Hall Mansions to help my eldest sister and do errands for her. I spent many hours sitting on the floor by one of the rosewood vaneer book cases, which I still possess, reading a varied assortment of works ranging from the Ehtics of Aristotle, through all the nineteenth century poets, down to the poems of Bulwer Lytton, written under the name of Owen Meredith.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
