I remember reading the Peanuts comic strip as a kid. One recurring theme was Snoopy in his imagined persona as a world-famous author, sitting on top of his kennel with an old-fashioned typewriter, working on his opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night.”

What I didn’t realize at that time was that cartoonist Charles Schulz made Snoopy use this phrase because "it was a cliché and had been one for a very long time." In fact, this comes from the first phrase of the opening sentence of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

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 that 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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's style is often described as florid and overly elaborate, with a preference for long, winding sentences weighed down with adjectives and adverbs. His prose often aims for drama and grandeur but sometimes tips over into purple prose, where the writing feels excessively ornamental or melodramatic. On the bright side, he didn’t use a lot of footnotes. On the other hand, his excesses are usually embedded directly within his text.

A passage inspired by Bulwer-Lytton's ostentatious style might read something like the following (he didn’t actually write this, but his fans circa the 1830s certainly wouldn’t have been surprised to read it):

It was a twilight drenched in the sanguine hues of a sinking sun, whose dying rays, splintered by the jagged crests of ancient oaks and twisted elms, spilled their golden-red effulgence upon the dew-dappled ground—each droplet a prism capturing the fleeting fire of the heavens. The air, thick with the musky perfume of the forest and trembling with the low, mournful susurrations of the wind, bore upon its chill the ominous weight of portentous things, as though the very elements conspired to weave a fabric of foreboding.

Alaric paused upon the moss-laden path, his countenance—a visage carved from the sternest marble, yet softened by the weary resignation of one who has gazed too long into the abyss of his own soul—betrayed no emotion save that grim resolve which animates the hearts of the desperate. His cloak, a tattered mantle of sable hue, billowed restlessly about his shoulders, whipped by the restless wind that howled like a chorus of phantoms, unseen but not unfelt. He stood thus, a solitary figure upon the precipice of destiny, his thoughts a maelstrom of doubt and defiance, his purpose shrouded in shadows darker than the encroaching night.

To be fair, Bulwer-Lytton’s works were well known in his time and—in addition to “a dark and stormy night”—he coined many famous phrases, including "pursuit of the almighty dollar," "the pen is mightier than the sword," and "the great unwashed."

It’s a sad fact that most of us may never have even heard of Edward were it not for the fact that professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University instigated the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) in 1982.

Entrants were invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels"—that is, one which was deliberately bad. The competition attracted only three entries in the first year, but then it started to receive media attention, ending up with thousands of entries over the years. In fact, I submitted one of my own many moons ago as follows.

As the hours passed, the expressions on the partygoers’ faces became increasingly bemused and bewildered as my mother—having grabbed the conversational reins with gusto and abandon using one of her classic opening gambits of “I bumped into Mrs. Forteskew-Smythe at the fishmonger’s the other day…”—proceeded to inundate the gathered throng with a myriad of seemingly innocuous and unrelated details: “…you remember, she was the oldest of three sisters; the youngest, Beryl, was a slut, while the middle girl eloped with a transsexual Australian taxidermist, and they had two sons who couldn’t bring themselves to touch any form of fruit, and…”, and I could see the question forming in everyone’s minds: “Can she possibly tie all these nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia together and somehow bring this tortuous tale to a meaningful close?”, and I cowered against the wall wearing a tight, grim smile because I knew, to my cost, that she could.

Sadly, I didn’t even receive a dishonorable mention, but at least I tried. Unfortunately, I fear I’ve lost my chance because I just heard that—after a 40+ year run—Scott has decided to terminate the competition (see Au Revoir, Noble Bulweriers!).

I don’t blame him; this must have been a huge amount of work. Still and all, I’m sad to see this competition go. On the bright side, Scott has committed to maintaining the BLFC Archive for posterity.

All I can say is that there are hours of chuckles and chortles lurking in this archive. Three examples I immediately ran across are as follows:

She looked at her hands and saw the desiccated skin hanging in Shar-Pei wrinkles, confetti-like freckles, and those dry, dry cuticles--even her "Fatale Crimson" nail color had faded in the relentless sun to the color of old sirloin--and she vowed if she ever got out of the Sahara alive, she'd never buy polish on sale at Walgreen's again. (Christin Keck, Kent, OH)

It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream. (Chris Harget, Campbell, CA)

If Gilbert had known then what he knew now, he would have seen that the dilemma facing him--to do a good deed for the wrong reason or to do a bad deed for the right reason--had long ago been shown to be two sides of the same coin by the philosopher known as Theragora of Crete even though he was not from Crete at all, but from Malta, which of course was not called Malta when Theragora was there. (Hubert Kennedy, Concord, CA)

If you get a moment, why not have a root through the archive yourself and then share your favorite entries in the comments below.