Page "Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton" Paragraph 31

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 novel Paul Clifford: 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.

Entrants in the contest seek to capture the rapid changes in point of view, the florid language, and the atmosphere of the full sentence.

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.

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, The Bargain Lost, although not at the very beginning.

It reads: It was a dark and stormy night.

The rain fell in cataracts.

Written a year after Paul Clifford, it appears to be Poe's deliberate mocking of Lord Lytton's opening line.