Night and Morning, Volume 1
1841
What Bulwer Lytton understood better than most Victorian novelists was this: money vanishes, status crumbles, but the heart's ambitions burn on. "Night and Morning" opens in an English village where Reverend Caleb Price tends his modest flock - a man who traded privilege for purpose, now finding peace beside the river with rod in hand. When his old acquaintance Philip Beaufort arrives - a once-wealthy man still grasping at grand designs - their reunion sets in motion a dangerous game of forbidden love and social climbing. Philip's secret plan to marry beneath his station threatens to unravel everything he's built, while the novel's darker currents pull toward vice and crime. The streets and drawing rooms Bulwer Lytton populates are dangerous places where every social rule carries consequence. This is Victorian society stripped bare: its cruelties, its hypocrisies, and the quiet redemption that might be found in its margins. For readers who savor the great social novels of the nineteenth century - where every marriage is a negotiation and every shilling carries the weight of destiny - this remains essential, propulsive stuff.
