The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest has been run again and the winners are in!
What’s the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest?
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for “The Last Days of Pompeii†(1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression “the pen is mightier than the sword,†and phrases like “the great unwashed†and “the almighty dollar,†Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the “Peanuts†beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, “It was a dark and stormy night.â€
My favorite was the winner in the adventure category…
As the hippo’s jaws clamped on Henry’s body he noted the four huge teeth badly in need of a clean, preferably with one of those electric sonic toothbrushes, and he reflected that his name would be immortalized by his unusual death, since hippo killings are not a daily occurrence, at least not in the high street of Chipping Sodbury.
Tim Lafferty
Horsell, Woking, UK