Books with author Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton) Lytton

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added, "But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!" Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.

Rome. On removing to Naples, I threw it aside for The Last Days of Pompeii, which required more than Rienzi the advantage of residence within reach of the scenes described. The fate of the Roman Tribune continued, however, to haunt and impress me, and, some time after Pompeii was published, I renewed my earlier undertaking. I regarded the completion of these volumes, indeed, as a kind of duty ;for having had occasion to read the original authorities from which modern historians have drawn their accounts of the life of Rienzi, I was led to believe that a very remarkable man had been superficially judged, and a very important period crudely examined. And this belief was sufficiently strong to induce me at first to meditate a more serious work upon the life and times of Rienzi. f Various reasons concurred against this project and I renounced the biography to commence the fiction. I have still, however, adhered, with a greater fidelity than is customary in Romance, to all the leading events of the public life of the Roman Tribune ;and the reader will peihaps find in these pages a more full and detailed account of the rise and fall of Rienzi, than in any English work of which I am aware. I have, it is true, taken a view of his character different in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi. But it is a view, in all its main features, which I believe (and think I could prove) myself to be warranted in taking, not less by the facts of history than the laws of fiction. In the mean while, as I have given the facts from which I have drawn my interpretation of the principal agent, the reader has sufficient data for his own judgment. In the picture of the Roman populace, as in that of the Roman nobles of the fourteenth century, I follow literally the descriptions left to us ;they are not flattering, but they are faithful, likenesses. Preserving generally the real c(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Regarded by many as Bulwer-Lytton’s best novel, Vril: The Power of The Coming Race is a powerful novel that fired the imagination of readers starting in the 1870’s. Among the earliest examples of what would become the genre of science fiction, among many authors it influenced H. G. Wells, Samuel Butler, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book tells the story of a young American adventurer who discovers a portal to an underground world at the bottom of a mine shaft. In this world lives a highly advanced race, with a dark secret. This Aelzina Books edition is not a difficult-to read photo-reproduction of an old book. Instead it is a completely new edition, professionally re-typeset from the original 1871 volume in easy-to-read 18 point type using a modern version of the classic Garamond typeface for easy readability. Aelzina Books also includes a short biography of the author as a preface to each book we publish.