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https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/651542/dark-and-stormy-night-worst-sentence-history-literature>
"If you want to start a novel, your options for an opening line are just this
side of infinite. But if you want to start a novel badly, any cartoon beagle
can tell you that there’s only one choice: “It was a dark and stormy night.”
The phrase has become so ingrained in our literary culture that we rarely give
much thought to its origin—and when he put pen to paper, it’s likely that
author and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton had no idea just how infamous his
dark and stormy night would become. Bulwer-Lytton was once as widely read as
his friend Charles Dickens, but today he’s remembered almost exclusively for
one bad sentence. It’s an ironic legacy for a prolific author who influenced
some of the most popular novels in English literature, helped invent sci-fi
fandom, laid the groundwork for modern crime fiction, and accidentally sparked
a movement for an important social reform."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
