Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, (8 November 1831 – 24 November 1891), was a British statesman, Conservative politician and poet who used the pseudonym Owen Meredith. During his tenure as Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He served as British Ambassador to France from 1887 to 1891.

His tenure as Viceroy was controversial for its ruthlessness in both domestic and foreign affairs, especially for his handling of the Great Famine of 1876–1878 and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. His son Victor Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd Earl of Lytton, who was born in India, later served as Governor of Bengal and briefly as acting Viceroy. The senior earl was also the father-in-law of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed New Delhi.

Lytton was a protégé of Benjamin Disraeli in domestic affairs, and of Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, who was his predecessor as Ambassador to France, in foreign affairs. His tenure as Ambassador to Paris was successful, and Lytton was afforded the rare tribute – especially for an Englishman – of a French state funeral in Paris.

Childhood and education

thumb|left|upright=1.15|[[Harrow School]]

Lytton was the son of the novelists Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Rosina Doyle Wheeler (who was the daughter of the early women's rights advocate Anna Wheeler). His uncle was Sir Henry Bulwer. His childhood was spoiled by the altercations of his parents, who separated acrimoniously when he was a boy. However, Lytton received the patronage of John Forster – an influential friend of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens – who was generally considered to be the first professional biographer of 19th century England.

Lytton's mother, who lost access to her children, satirised his father in her 1839 novel Cheveley, or the Man of Honour. His father subsequently had his mother placed under restraint, as a consequence of an assertion of her insanity, which provoked public outcry and her liberation a few weeks later. His mother chronicled this episode in her memoirs.

After being taught at home for a while, he was educated in schools in Twickenham and Brighton and thence Harrow, and at the University of Bonn. It was at this time he met Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1878–1880

Britain was deeply concerned throughout the 1870s about Russian attempts to increase its influence in Afghanistan, which provided a Central Asian buffer state between the Russian Empire and British India. Lytton had been given express instructions to recover the friendship of the Amir of Afghanistan, Sher Ali Khan, who was perceived at this point to have sided with Russia against Britain, and made every effort to do so for eighteen months.

The war was seen at the time as an ignominious but barely acceptable end to the "Great Game", closing a long chapter of conflict with the Russian Empire without even a proxy engagement. The pyrrhic victory of British arms in India was a quiet embarrassment which played a small but critical role in the nascent scramble for Africa; in this way, Lytton and his war helped shape the contours of the 20th century in dramatic and unexpected ways. Lytton resigned at the same time as the Conservative government. He was the last Viceroy of India to govern an open frontier.

Assassination attempt

In December 1879, Lytton was the target of an assassination attempt while on tour in Calcutta, but escaped unharmed. The would-be assassin was George Edward Dessa, who suffered from delusions; he was deemed unfit to stand trial and died in an asylum.

Commemoration

A permanent exhibition in Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, is dedicated to his diplomatic service in India. There is a monument dedicated in his name at Nahan, Himachal Pradesh, India, domestically called Delhi Gate.

Domestic politics

In 1880, Lytton resigned his Viceroyalty at the same time that Benjamin Disraeli resigned the premiership. Lytton was created Earl of Lytton, in the County of Derby, and Viscount Knebworth, of Knebworth in the County of Hertford. As soon as the summer session was over, he undertook "a solitary ramble about the country". He visited Oxford for the first time, went for a trip on the Thames, and then revisited the hydropathic establishment at Malvern, where he had been with his father as a boy". He saw this as an antidote to the otherwise indulgent lifestyle that came with his career, and used his sojourn there to undertake a critique of a new volume of poetry by his friend Wilfrid Blunt.

Ambassador to Paris: 1887–1891

Lytton was Ambassador to France from 1887 to 1891. During the second half of the 1880s, before his appointment as Ambassador in 1887, Lytton served as Secretary to the Ambassador to Paris, Lord Lyons. He succeeded Lyons, as Ambassador, subsequent to the resignation of Lyons in 1887.

Lord Lytton died in Paris on 24 November 1891, where he was given the rare honour of a state funeral. His body was then brought back for interment in the private family mausoleum in Knebworth Park.

A memorial with an inscribed bronze medallion in St Paul's Cathedral was dedicated in February 1903, in the presence of his family.

Writings as "Owen Meredith"

thumb|The Right Honourable The Lord Lytton

When Lytton was twenty-five years old, he published in London a volume of poems under the name of Owen Meredith.

  • Serbski Pesme (1861). Plagiarized from a French translation of Serbian poems.
  • The Ring of Ainasis (1863)
  • Fables in Song (1874)
  • Speeches of Edward Lord Lytton with some of his Political Writings, Hitherto unpublished, and a Prefactory Memoir by His Son (1874)
  • The Life Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1883)
  • Glenaveril (1885)
  • After Paradise, or Legends of Exile (1887)
  • King Poppy: A Story Without End (partially composed in early 1870s: only first published in 1892), paraphrase or even plagiarism.

Marriage and children

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thumb|right|[[Edith Villiers, Countess of Lytton]]

On 4 October 1864 Lytton married Edith Villiers. She was the daughter of Edward Ernest Villiers (1806–1843) and Elizabeth Charlotte Liddell and the granddaughter of George Villiers.

  • Neville Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl of Lytton (1879–1951)