Ismael; An Oriental Tale with Other Poems

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton was born on the 25th May 1803 the youngest of three sons.

When he was four his father died and the family moved to London. As a child he was delicate and neurotic and failed to fit in at a number of boarding schools. However, he was academically and creatively precocious and published his first work as a teenager; 'Ishmael with Other Poems' in 1820.

Two years later he was at Cambridge University and won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse for Sculpture.

In 1828 his novel, 'Pelham', brought him an income, together with commercial and critical success. He followed these with a string of applauded works across several genres: historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, science fiction and poetry.

In 1841, he started the semi-scientific Monthly Chronicle magazine to exploit the great Victorian fascination to chronicle and publish all that the Empire and Industrial Revolution were discovering, inventing and changing.

In 1858 he entered Lord Derby's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies and took a keen interest in the development of the Crown Colony of British Columbia. Several years later he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in Hertford County.

Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered with a disease of the ear and for the last years of his life he lived in Torquay nursing his health. An operation to cure his deafness caused an abscess to form in his ear which burst causing intense pain and contributed to his death.

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton died on the 18th January 1873, in Torquay. He was 69.

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