Editing Edward Bulwer-Lytton (section)

===Contest===
{{Further|Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest}}
Bulwer-Lytton's name lives on in the annual [[Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest]], in which contestants think up terrible openings for imaginary novels, inspired by the first line of his 1830 novel ''[[Paul Clifford]]'':<ref>Edward Bulwer Lytton, ''Paul Clifford'' (Paris, France: Baudry's European Library, 1838), [https://books.google.com/books?id=jZtCAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1 page 1] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131127161551/http://books.google.com/books?id=jZtCAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1 |date=27 November 2013}}</ref>

<blockquote>[[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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.</blockquote>

Entrants in the contest seek to capture the rapid changes in point of view, the florid language, and the atmosphere of the full sentence.<ref>{{cite web |last=Infopédia |title=Edward Bulwer-Lytton - Infopédia |url=https://www.infopedia.pt/$edward-bulwer-lytton |access-date=2021-08-15 |website=Infopédia - Dicionários Porto Editora |language=pt}}</ref> The opening was popularized by the ''[[Peanuts]]'' comic strip, in which [[Snoopy]]'s sessions on the typewriter usually began with "[[It was a dark and stormy night]]".<ref>{{cite news |first=Tracy |last=Mumford |title=Who really wrote 'it was a dark and stormy night'? |url=https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/10/27/bcst-books-dark-and-stormy-night |work=MPR |date=2015-10-27}}</ref> The same words also form the first sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's [[Newbery Medal]]–winning novel ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]''. Similar wording appears in Edgar Allan Poe's 1831 short story "[[Bon-Bon (short story)|The Bargain Lost]]", although not at the very beginning. It reads:

<blockquote>It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces. Who would have thought of passions so fierce in that calm water that slumbers all day long? At a slight alabaster stand, trembling beneath the ponderous tomes which it supported, sat the hero of our story.</blockquote>