page_title: Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton
section_title: Writings as "Owen Meredith"
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton / Writings as "Owen Meredith"
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton Image manipulated using en:The GIMP.
context_page_description: Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, PC was an English statesman, Conservative politician, and poet. He served as Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880—during his tenure Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India—and as British Ambassador to France from 1887 to 1891.
  His tenure as Viceroy was controversial for its ruthlessness in both domestic and foreign affairs: especially for his handling of the Great Famine of 1876–78, and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Lytton's policies were alleged to be informed by his Social Darwinism. His son Victor Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd Earl of Lytton, who was born in India, later served as Governor of Bengal and briefly as acting Viceroy, and he was the father-in-law of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed New Delhi.
  Lytton was a protégé of Benjamin Disraeli in domestic affairs, and of Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, who was his predecessor as Ambassador to France, in foreign affairs. His tenure as Ambassador to Paris was successful, and Lytton was afforded the rare tribute – especially for an Englishman – of a French state funeral in Paris.
context_section_description: When Lytton was twenty-five years old, he published in London a volume of poems under the name of Owen Meredith. He went on to publish several other volumes under the same name. The most popular is Lucile, a story in verse published in 1860. His poetry was extremely popular and critically commended in his own day. He was a great experimenter with form. His best work is beautiful, and much of it is of a melancholy nature, as this short extract from a poem called "A Soul's Loss" shows, where the poet bids farewell to a lover who has betrayed him:
  Child, I have no lips to chide thee./Take the blessing of a heart/(Never more to beat beside thee!)/Which in blessing breaks. Depart./Farewell! I that deified thee/Dare not question what thou art.
  Lytton underesteemed his poetic ability: in his Chronicles and Characters (1868), the poor response to which distressed him, Lytton states, 'Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man./Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can'. However, Lytton's poetic ability was highly esteemed by other literary personalities of the day, and Oscar Wilde dedicated his play Lady Windermere's Fan to him.
  Lytton's publications included:
  Clytemnestra, The Earl's Return, The Artist and Other Poems (1855)
  The Wanderer (1859), a Byron-esque lyric of Continental adventures that was popular on its release
  Lucile (1860). Lytton was accused of plagiarizing George Sand's novel Lavinia for the story.
  Serbski Pesme (1861). Plagiarized from a French translation of Serbian poems.
  The Ring of Ainasis (1863)
  Fables in Song (1874)
  Speeches of Edward Lord Lytton with some of his Political Writings, Hitherto unpublished, and a Prefactory Memoir by His Son (1874)
  The Life Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1883)
  Glenaveril (1885)
  After Paradise, or Legends of Exile (1887)
  King Poppy: A Story Without End (partially composed in early 1870s: only first published in 1892), an allegorical romance in blank verse that was Lytton's favourite of his verse romances
  Based on the French translation, in 1868 he published a drama titled Orval, or the Fool of Time which has been inspired by Krasiński's The Undivine Comedy to the point it has been discussed in scholarly literature as an example of a "rough translation", paraphrase or even  plagiarism.
caption: The Right Honourable The Lord Lytton
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