Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/17



, whose writings have been enormously popular under their author's several changes of name, was born in May 1806, the third son of William Earle Bulwer, Esq., of Wood Bailing and Heydon. The distinguished author has been at one time Lytton-Bulwer, at another Bulwer-Lytton. His eldest brother William holds the family lands, granted to his ancestor by the Conqueror. The second brother, Henry, whose death was lately recorded, was created Lord Bailing for his eminent services as a diplomatist. The third, youngest, and most famous of the family, is the subject of this notice—Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton of Knebworth. He married, in 1827, Rosina, daughter of Francis Wheeler, Esq., the surviving issue of which marriage is a son, well known as a writer under the nom de plume of Owen Meredith. Lord Lytton's other child, a daughter, died unmarried in 1848.

The great novelist was very young when first he began to write. When he was only fifteen, he sent out 'Ismael, an Oriental Tale,' and a poem on 'Waterloo,' celebrating the heroic deeds of Corporal Shaw the Lifeguards-man:

The young poet was sent to Cambridge, where in 1825 he won the Chancellor's medal; and after another volume of verse, gave the world 'Falkland,' his first novel. A large part of this work is made up of letters from one of the characters to another; and the old style of heading, 'From the same to the same,' becomes very tedious, as they talk in vapid platitudes, slightly spiced with Byronic morality. The preface is dated March 7, 1827, and the author says in it, he is 'entering a career with no motive and