It was a dark and stormy night..... FYI

[KS Toronado]

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.

Have heard that so many times I wondered who said it first, so looked around the ole WWW, now I know and
so does anyone reading this.

The first phrase of the opening sentence of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford

[Wingus Dingus]

1. I thought it was Snoopy.

[Jack-o-Lantern]

2. Even Snoopy typing out his novel uses "it was a dark and stormy night" for his opening.

[RockRaven]

3. To my recollection, off the top of my head, it gained notoriety by being voted worst opening

line/sentence of a novel/book, or some such epithet in some such contest.

[KS Toronado]

4. I'd heard that also, what else I found on this dark and clear nite

Writer's Digest described this sentence as "the literary poster child for bad story starters". On the other hand,
the American Book Review ranked it as No. 22 on its "Best first lines from novels" list.

Kinda like movie reviewers, they all have their own opinions.

[Salviati]

7. The author is also the person who coined the phrase:

"The pen is mightier than the sword" At least in the current phrasing of the idea...

[KS Toronado]

5. Oops, getting old & forgetful on this dark & cold nite

Info found here......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night

[Hekate]

6. Ah! my lovely, I shall have you! (Or some such drivel) Here is the author's 1840 Preface...

I think I’ll go ahead and download it from Gutenberg.org, as I’ve often wondered what kind of turgid prose could follow those opening lines.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.

This novel so far differs from the other fictions by the same author that it seeks to draw its interest rather from practical than ideal sources. Out of some twelve Novels or Romances, embracing, however inadequately, a great variety of scene and character,—from “Pelham” to the “Pilgrims of the Rhine,” from “Rienzi” to the “Last Days of Pompeii,”—“Paul Clifford” is the only one in which a robber has been made the hero, or the peculiar phases of life which he illustrates have been brought into any prominent description.

Without pausing to inquire what realm of manners or what order of crime and sorrow is open to art, and capable of administering to the proper ends of fiction, I may be permitted to observe that the present subject was selected, and the Novel written, with a twofold object: First, to draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions; namely, a vicious prison-discipline, and a sanguinary criminal code,—the habit of corrupting the boy by the very punishment that ought to redeem him, and then hanging the man at the first occasion, as the easiest way of getting rid of our own blunders.

Between the example of crime which the tyro learns from the felons in the prison-yard, and the horrible levity with which the mob gather round the drop at Newgate, there is a connection which a writer may be pardoned for quitting loftier regions of imagination to trace and to detect. So far this book is less a picture of the king's highway than the law's royal road to the gallows,—a satire on the short cut established between the House of Correction and the Condemned Cell. A second and a lighter object in the novel of “Paul Clifford” (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the other.

[niyad]

8. Is it time for the Bulwer-Lytton competition?

I just checked. They accept submissions all year long, but the deadline for this year's competition is the end of June.

I learned a new word. "Bignitude".

[Scrivener7]

9. So cool! Thanks for researching it. And the poor guy! If it wasn't so

hackneyed it would be a good opening, and it wasn't hackneyed when he did it!

[KS Toronado]

10. Well I assume he wrote that on

a dark and stormy night.

[Scrivener7]

11. .