| Honorific-Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Lord Lytton | |
| Party: | Whig (1831–1841) Conservative (1851–1866) |
| Monarch1: | Victoria |
| Primeminister1: | The Earl of Derby |
| Office1: | Secretary of State for the Colonies |
| Term Start1: | 5 June 1858 |
| Predecessor1: | Lord Stanley |
| Term End1: | 11 June 1859 |
| Successor1: | The Duke of Newcastle |
| Birth Name: | Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer |
| Birth Date: | 25 May 1803 |
| Birth Place: | London, England |
| Death Place: | Torquay, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Children: | 2, including Robert |
| Parents: | William Earle Bulwer Elizabeth Barbara Warburton-Lytton |
| Alma Mater: | Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity Hall, Cambridge |
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. A noted philhellene, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated, but he declined. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.[1]
Bulwer-Lytton's works were well known in his time. He coined famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "dweller on the threshold", "the great unwashed", and the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." The sardonic Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually since 1982, claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels".[2] [3] [4] [5]
Bulwer was born on 25 May 1803 to General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk, and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth House, Hertfordshire. He had two older brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry (1801–1872; later Baron Dalling and Bulwer).
His father died and his mother moved to London when he was four years old. When he was 15, a tutor named Wallington, who tutored him at Ealing, encouraged him to publish an immature work: Ishmael and Other Poems. Around this time, Bulwer fell in love, but the woman's father induced her to marry another man. She died about the time that Bulwer went to Cambridge and he stated that her loss affected all his subsequent life.
In 1822 Bulwer-Lytton entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met John Auldjo, but soon moved to Trinity Hall. In 1825 he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse.