It was a dark and stormy night

"Dark and stormy night" redirects here. For the film, see Dark and Stormy Night (film). For the play, see It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (play).

"It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase[1] written by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the opening sentence of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.[2] The phrase is considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing,"[1] also known as purple prose.

Origin

The phrase had earlier been used by Washington Irving in his 1809 "A History of New York."[3] Its status as a catchphrase for bad writing comes from the opening sentence of Bulwer-Lytton's 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 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.

Evaluations of the opening sentence

Writer's Digest described this sentence as "the literary posterchild for bad story starters."[4] On the other hand, the American Book Review ranked it as #22 on its "Best first lines from novels list."[5]

In 2008, the great-great-great-grandson of Bulwer-Lytton, Henry Lytton-Cobbold, participated in a debate in the town of Lytton, British Columbia with Scott Rice, the founder of the International Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Rice accused Bulwer-Lytton of penning "27 novels whose perfervid turgidity I intend to expose, denude, and generally make visible." Lytton-Cobbold defended his ancestor, noting that he had coined many other phrases widely used today such as "the pen is mightier than the sword", "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar", and said it was "rather unfair that Professor Rice decided to name the competition after him for entirely the wrong reasons."[6]

Later usage

Literature

The Peanuts comic strip character Snoopy, in his imagined persona as the World Famous Author, always begins his novels with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night."[7] Cartoonist Charles Schulz made Snoopy use this phrase because "it was a cliché, and had been one for a very long time."[8] A book by Schulz, titled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy and credited to Snoopy as author, was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1971.[9]

It is the opening line (and paragraph) in the popular 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle:[10]

It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.[11]

L'Engle biographer Leonard Marcus notes that

With a wink to the reader, she chose for the opening line of A Wrinkle in Time, her most audaciously original work of fiction, that hoariest of cliches...L'Engle herself was certainly aware of old warhorse's literary provenance as...Edward Bulwer-Lytton's much maligned much parodied repository of Victorian purple prose, Paul Clifford.[12]

While discussing the importance of establishing the tone of voice at the beginning of fiction, Judy Morris notes that L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time opens with "Snoopy's signature phrase."[13]

Music

Joni Mitchell's song "Crazy Cries of Love" on her album Taming the Tiger opens with "It was a dark and stormy night". In the December 1998 issue of Musician, Mitchell discusses her idea of using several cliche lines in the lyrics of multiple songs on the album, such as "the old man is snoring" in the title song Taming the Tiger. Her co-lyricist, Don Fried, had read of a competition in The New Yorker to write a story opening with "It was a dark and stormy night" and was inspired to put it in the song lyrics. Mitchell states

But the second line is a brilliant deviation from the cliché: "Everyone was at the wing-ding." It's a beautiful out, but that was because it was competition to dig yourself out of a cliché hole in an original way. He never sent it in to "The New Yorker," but he just did it as an original exercise.[14]

Board game

In the board game titled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, contestants are given first lines of various famous novels and must guess their origin. Originally sold independently in bookstores in the Chicago area,[15] it was later picked up by the online book reading club Goodreads.com.[16]

Writing contest

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed in 1982. The contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing. It challenges entrants to compose "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."[7] The "best" of the resulting entries have been published in a series of paperback books, starting with It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in 1984.[17]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "It was a dark and stormy night". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved 27 February 2013.
  2. ↑ Lytton, Edward Bulwer (1830). Paul Clifford. New York: Cassell Pub. Co. OCLC 19091989.
  3. ↑ Beauties of Washington Irving, p. 261
  4. ↑ Petit, Zachary (January 18, 2013). "Famous First Lines Reveal How to Start a Novel". Literary Digest. Retrieved 30 May 2013.
  5. ↑ "100 Best First Lines from Novels". American Book Review. Retrieved 30 May 2013.
  6. ↑ Alison Flood (19 August 2008). "'Literary tragedy' of Bulwer-Lytton's dark and stormy night under debate". Guardian. Retrieved 29 May 2013.]
  7. 1 2 About The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
  8. ↑ Foster, Thomas C. (2003). How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper-Collins. p. 74.
  9. ↑ Schulz, Charles M. (2010). My Life with Charlie Brown. University Press of Mississippi. p. xviii.
  10. ↑ Martin, Douglas (September 8, 2007). "Madeleine L’Engle, Writer of Children’s Classics, Is Dead at 88". New York Times. Retrieved 3 March 2013.
  11. ↑ L'Engle, Madeleine (1962). A Wrinkle in Time. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. OCLC 22421788.
  12. ↑ Marcus, Leonard (2012). Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices. Macmillan. p. 14. ISBN 0374298971. This is an anthology of multiple biographical essays. The quote is from the introduction by the editor.
  13. ↑ Morris, Judy (2001). Writing fiction for children: stories only you can tell. University of Illinois Press. p. 99.
  14. ↑ Interview with Joni Mitchell in Musician reproduced at jonimitchell.com
  15. ↑ Ruth Solomon (April 3, 2008). "Bright sunny day for new game: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night". Libertyville Review.
  16. ↑ Goodreadgames.com
  17. ↑ Rice, Scott (1984). It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Best (?) from the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140075564.
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