HIT Re: GEN: It was a dark and stormy...

[Mary Ann Kull <Mary_Ann_Kull@EAUR.WNYRIC.ORG>]

     Thanks to everyone for you help with my question about the origin of
     the opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night". It was
     Bulwer-Lytton that I was thinking of based on the annual award named
     in his memory.

     Here's the responses I received:

     It comes from Bulver-Lytton's book The lasst days of Pompeii (i
     THINK). I am sure of the author, less sure of the title of the book.
     However, it is the first line of the novel.

     It's the first line of _A Wrinkle in Time_, too.    I keep telling
     people don't play trival pursuit with librarians.  We know a little
     about alot of things!! ;)

     It is from the 1830 novel _Paul Clifford_ by Edward George
     Bulwer-Lytton.

     I have a book entitled "It was a dark and storm night."  The
     introduction says the Contest is the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest "a
     bad-writing contest, one that pitted the entrants against the worst
     literay minds in bookdom.  The goal of each entrant was tocompose the
     worst possible opening sentence for an imaginary novel."

     Snoopy? (Sorry, couldn't resist! :-) Or should I say, didn't want to
     resist!)


     Don't know any origin except that it is the opening line of A Wrinkle
     in Time.

     Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton is the author who first penned that starting
     sentence.  I used to think it was from the LAST DAYS OF POMPEII but I
     have no verification for that.  (of course Snoopy, that famous beagle
     writer, has penned many novels starting with that phrase).


      Mary Ann Kull, Librarian
                        East Aurora HS
                        E. Aurora, NY 14052
                        Mary_Ann_Kull@eaur.wnyric.org