SOURCE: “Bulwer's Godolphin: The Metamorphosis of the Fashionable Novel,” in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 26, No. 4, Autumn, 1986, pp. 675-90.

In the essay that follows, Cragg argues that the range of Bulwer-Lytton's fiction, from fashionable novels to works more concerned with social and political reform, reflects the “changing attitudes and tastes of his day.”

Between 1830 and 1870 Bulwer-Lytton's novels were more extensively published than were those of any of his English contemporaries.¹ Part of the reason for this popularity is that his novels so perfectly coincided with the changing attitudes and tastes of his day. In his early work these changes saw him abandon the pose of the dandy to become a concerned social thinker and advocate of certain aspects of Benthamite radicalism, and then redefine his role once more to that of the staunch supporter of traditional institutions. This metamorphosis is dramatically illustrated in Godolphin, and especially in...