Rehabilitating Lytton?

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BULWER LYTTON: THE RISE AND FALL OF A VICTORIAN MAN OF LETTERS

By Leslie Mitchell

Hambledon & London, $34.95, 292 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY MARTIN RUBIN

The "rise and fall" alluded to in the subtitle of "Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters," is somewhat misleading in that throughout his career, Bulwer Lytton was a conspicuous success as a writer. Highly esteemed by such writers as Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens, he was immensely popular with the reading public and turned out a stream of bestselling novels which made him a considerable fortune.

There were political fictions, novels of scandal, science fiction, Newgate novels about criminal life, and works of historical fiction, most notably his magnum opus, "The Last Days of Pompeii." The "fall" which Oxford don Leslie Mitchell has put in his title took place almost half a century after Lytton's death in 1873, when, after selling robustly following his death, his sales (along with so much else) perished in World War I:

"At Lytton's funeral in Westminster Abbey, Benjamin Jowett heralded him as 'one of England's greatest writers and one of the most distinguished men of our time'. One hundred and thirty years later, Lytton and his work is [sic] largely unknown. Up to 1914, the sales of his books rivaled those of Dickens. Since 1918, few people have shown any interest. Rarely can a reputation have stood so high and fallen so low. . . . His rehabilitation as an undoubtedly eminent Victorian is long overdue. It is the aim of this book to contribute to that process."

Anyone who has tried to read one of Bulwer Lytton's works will probably not have to do too much speculating as to why this happened. The strange thing is that it took a global Armageddon to accomplish what even the most tentative stirrings of Modernism in the early years of the 20th century should have been able to bring about.

As that century wore on, it is true that many readers found the stylistic ethos of Victorian literature ever harder to take. But where a writer had something really special to offer, modern readers were prepared to put up with a considerable amount in order to be, say, enthralled by Dickens' power or amused by Trollope's wicked sense of fun. They could even put up with Thackeray's garrulousness for the sake of his marvelous stories or Samuel Butler's stolidity in order to penetrate the facades of Victorian society. But, really, Bulwer Lytton is too much to bear, far worse even than Disraeli, whose brilliant insights and great wit in his now largely unread novels are kept from us by the impenetrable edifice of his prose style.