Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Rosina Bulwer Lytton Baroness Lytton
-
Standard Name: Lytton, Rosina Bulwer Lytton,,, Baroness
Birth Name: Rosina Wheeler
Married Name: Rosina Bulwer Lytton
Pseudonym: Hon. George Scott
RBLBL
wrote prolifically after her separation from her husband in 1836, penning sixteen novels, as well as a collection of essays and an autobiography. A vein of polemic runs through her work regarding the treatment of women, particularly married women, under nineteenth-century British law. She encountered great difficulty in getting her work published because of her notoriety and the pressure that her husband, a successful novelist, exerted on publishers. He even obtained legal injunctions against her work, which often parodied him.
Blain, Virginia. “Rosina Bulwer Lytton and the Rage of the Unheard”. The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol.
LEL
's friends Anna Maria Hall
, Katherine Thomson
, and Rosina Bulwer Lytton
defended her reputation against scandal. However, around the time of this broken engagement, Lytton began to credit her husband's account of...
Friends, Associates
Anna Wheeler
His fuller description (in a letter to his sister) was not so pleasant, something between Jeremy Bentham
and Meg Merrilies, very clever, but awfully revolutionary.
Disraeli, Benjamin. Lord Beaconsfield’s Correspondence With His Sister 1832-1852. John Murray, 1886.
15
Meg Merrilies was a fictitious gipsy in a poem...
Friends, Associates
Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
In London in 1824 she had a socially unsuccessful meeting with Wordsworth
, who was by now a thorough reactionary in politics. He went to some pains to snub her; she refused to notice this...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
During the 1820s Spence and Benger, then past their youth and each living on a pittance, were associated in running a salon on the model of those of the rich (like Lady Holland) or the...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
At the same period EOB
was a friend of another miscellaneous writer, Elizabeth Isabella Spence
, who entertained in the same eccentric, low-budget style. These two elderly ladies (Spence was ten years older than Benger)...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Gore
CG
was acquainted with a number of important literary figures. Before leaving London for the Continent she attended an assembly given by Rosina Bulwer-Lytton
to which Disraeli
, Lady Morgan
, and Letitia Landon
also...
Friends, Associates
Anna Maria Hall
One of AMH
's closest friends was the actress Helen Faucit
, later Lady Martin. Though socially conservative in her attitudes, she was apparently more ready than her husband to achieve friendly relations with those...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Trollope
FT
's years of literary success were marked by tragedy: she lost two of her children to consumption, and eventually lost a third.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, and William E. Fredeman, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 21. Gale Research, 1983.
21: 324
Heineman, Helen. Mrs. Trollope: The Triumphant Feminine in the Nineteenth Century. Ohio University Press, 1979.
135
However, her writing brought her into a supportive network...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Late in life EOB
ran a kind of salon which was remarkable for being bohemian and operating on a shoestring: with tea rather than wine (unlike the lavish salons of contemporary society hostesses like Lady Holland
Literary responses
Elizabeth Melvill
Comments on Ane Godlie Dreame, though sparse, have been persistent. John Livingstone
recorded that she was famous for her dream anent her spirituall condition.
qtd. in
Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
68
, No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
40
John Armstrong
in 1770 thought it almost too terrible...
Occupation
Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR
was clearly a key element, perhaps the key element, in the success of the Hans Place school. She taught the general curriculum there for nearly twenty-five years, from its founding until 1818, and she...
Textual Features
Flora Tristan
One chapter, entitled English Women, criticizes British social systems, and details the consequences women suffer because of the indissolubility of marriage.
Tristan, Flora. Flora Tristan’s London Journal, 1840. Translators Palmer, Dennis and Giselle Pincetl, Charles River Books, 1980.
198
FT
shows particular sympathy for Rosina Bulwer Lytton
, whom she depicts...
Textual Production
Matilda Betham-Edwards
Owen Meredith was the son of two writers: Rosina
and Edward Bulwer Lytton
. He was born in 1831, five years before his parents separated. He was about seven when his father removed him from...
Violence
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton first Baron Lytton
The marriage was fraught with violence. Edward
once bit a chunk out of his wife's cheek during a fight. During another dispute, Rosina
burnt Edward's favourite shirt.
Lytton, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness. “Introduction”. A Blighted Life, edited by Marie Mulvey Roberts, Thoemmes, 1994, p. vi - xxxvi.
xvi
Blain, Virginia. “Rosina Bulwer Lytton and the Rage of the Unheard”. The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol.
53
, No. 3, 1 June 1990– 2024, pp. 210-36.
225
Violence
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton first Baron Lytton
On 21 June 1858, Bulwer Lytton
committed his estranged wife, Rosina Bulwer Lytton
, to a lunatic asylum after she spoke publicly in Hertford against his candidacy for parliament as a Tory. Public outrage over...
