In his own day, Bulwer's position among the most unquestionably popular and the most critically esteemed novelists seemed firmly established. As with so many Victorian writers, though, his fortunes declined drastically after his death, and not until fairly recently has the trend been reversed and a new awareness of his positive achievement become possible. Readers now seem willing to forgive his stylistic flaws--notably a certain bombast and straining after effects--in order to appreciate the intellectual vigor and emotional earnestness of his admittedly imperfect fictional works. Though he belonged to an age of intense formal experimentation, his restless efforts to expand the boundaries of the fictional form impress many modern readers as especially personal, ambitious, and in some respects prophetic. Indeed he was, as it now appears, as unorthodox in his own way as any of his great contemporaries. His version of artistic unorthodoxy inspired him to withstand the...