Edward Bulwer-Lytton- England and the English

[Beorn]

Edward Bulwer-Lytton- England and the English



A brief summary of the author:

"He spent most of his working life looking for slights, feeling offended and demanding apologies from people who didn't realise they had done anything wrong. This fastidiousness about his dignity was doubly odd, given that Lytton went out of his way to make a spectacle of himself: he smoked a pipe that was 7ft long and paraded around town in inappropriately youthful clothes. ... Despite some of his odder ideas (he spent quite a lot of time experimenting with snails to see if they had telepathic abilities), Lytton had one foot planted firmly in the material world. He suggested that authors rather than their publishers retain the copyright on any particular piece of work, and ensured that cranky but important writers such as Godwin and Swinburne were guaranteed a certain level of support from public money."

[Psychonaut]

he smoked a pipe that was 7ft long

Holy crap! That's awesome!

Seriously though, he may've been a foppish retard, but he wrote a handful of good stories. Zanoni and The Coming Race make for enjoyable reads.