Robert Bulwer-Lytton (under the pseudonym Owen Meredith) and his father, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, each contributed poetry to the Arthurian canon. In order to be inclusive of his complicated name and titles, here is the beginning of his current Encyclopaedia Britannica entry:

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, in full Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, Viscount Knebworth of Knebworth, 2nd Baron Lytton of Knebworth, pseudonym Owen Meredith . . . British diplomat and viceroy of India (1876–80) who also achieved, during his lifetime, a reputation as a poet.

Robert's father was well-known as a novelist, and beyond that "he was a figure; rather as Oscar Wilde was later a figure" (Chesterton 136). He was uniquely popular and wanted to stay that way — in a 1854 letter to his son, Edward wrote "I don't think, whatever your merit, the world would allow two of the same name to have both a permanent reputation in literature. You would soon come to grudge me my life, and feel a guilty thrill every time you heard I was ill” (Lytton 60). Later in the letter, after the fatherly advice to get a job, Edward wrote that if HE didn't have to work, he'd be in France "writing New King Arthurs, which none save an affectionate son would read" (ibid.) Eventually, Edward relented and approved of his son's literary pursuits, provided it was under a pseudonym and not published for two years. 

Of his considerable output, The Arthurian Annals credit Owen Meredith with three Arthurian poems and cite two tangents (one with a reference to Merlin and one involving Avalon). "Queen Guenevere,"...

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Robert Bulwer-Lytton (under the pseudonym Owen Meredith) and his father, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, each contributed poetry to the Arthurian canon. In order to be inclusive of his complicated name and titles, here is the beginning of his current Encyclopaedia Britannica entry:

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, in full Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, Viscount Knebworth of Knebworth, 2nd Baron Lytton of Knebworth, pseudonym Owen Meredith . . . British diplomat and viceroy of India (1876–80) who also achieved, during his lifetime, a reputation as a poet.

Robert's father was well-known as a novelist, and beyond that "he was a figure; rather as Oscar Wilde was later a figure" (Chesterton 136). He was uniquely popular and wanted to stay that way — in a 1854 letter to his son, Edward wrote "I don't think, whatever your merit, the world would allow two of the same name to have both a permanent reputation in literature. You would soon come to grudge me my life, and feel a guilty thrill every time you heard I was ill” (Lytton 60). Later in the letter, after the fatherly advice to get a job, Edward wrote that if HE didn't have to work, he'd be in France "writing New King Arthurs, which none save an affectionate son would read" (ibid.) Eventually, Edward relented and approved of his son's literary pursuits, provided it was under a pseudonym and not published for two years. 

Of his considerable output, The Arthurian Annals credit Owen Meredith with three Arthurian poems and cite two tangents (one with a reference to Merlin and one involving Avalon). "Queen Guenevere," "Elayne le Blanc," and "The Parting of Launcelot and Guenevere” appeared in 1855 (Nastali 108). 

Times were changing, and overwritten moralistic and mystical writing was being replaced by more genuine characters and situations. For example, Florence S. Boos writes that the portrayal of Launcelot and Guenevere incident demonstrates Bulwer-Lytton's "preoccupation with the psychology of two deeply devoted lovers whose attachment is frayed by great external stress, and his evenhanded consideration of both lovers' complex dissatisfactions and points of view" (42). She suggests that the unconventional representations in these “now obscure” Arthurian poems might have "provided a little-noticed antecedent for [William] Morris's Malorian interests, and reinforced Morris's tendency to dramatize the anxieties and repressions latent in the Arthurian cycle. ... [It] may have provided a partial model for Morris's more striking evocation of an accused woman's self-defense and a prototype (in Bulwer-Lytton's "Parting of Launcelot and Guenevere") for the two lovers' anguish and misery in Morris's "King Arthur's Tomb." (31)

Robert has been credited with advancing an early feminist perspective in his characterizations. Boos points out that Robert's "poetic representations of eloquently assertive women who resisted the constraints imposed on them were strikingly unusual for the 1850s, and may well have encouraged his fellow youthful poets to venture farther along similar paths" (45). Biography written by: Rosemary Paprocki
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