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/ The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is    \
| held ever year at San Jose State Univ.  |
| by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in  |
| memory of Edward George Earle           |
| Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather     |
| prolific and popular (in his time)      |
| novelist. He is best known today for    |
| having written "The Last Days of        |
| Pompeii."                               |
|                                         |
| Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel |
| from the top of his doghouse, beginning |
| "It was a dark and stormy night..." he  |
| is borrowing from Lord Bulwer-Lytton.   |
| This was the line that opened his       |
| novel, "Paul Clifford," written in      |
| 1830. The full line reveals why it is   |
| so bad:                                 |
|                                         |
| 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.                   /
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