In his own lifetime, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, better known by his pseudonym Owen Meredith, was much more highly regarded as a poet than he is today. His lyrics were praised by discriminating critics, and he was especially well received in America, where his verse novel Lucile (1860) was published in more than 100 editions. However, Lytton never succeeded in establishing a style of his own, and was more than once accused of plagiarism. His works are now read mainly as documents in the history of Victorian taste rather than for any intrinsic merit they might possess, yet his talents as a writer of fables and vers de société are not inconsiderable.

Lytton was born in London on 8 November 1831 to the famous novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton (later Lord Lytton) and the brilliant but erratic Rosina Wheeler Bulwer-Lytton. His parents, preoccupied with a time-consuming social life complicated by marital...