Four Generations

[poliphilo]

Edward Bulwer Lytton was an Victorian politician, occultist and writer, famous for starting a novel with the words "it was a dark and stormy night". His best known book is the Last Days of Pompeii. He also wrote "The Haunted and the Haunters"- one of the best English ghost stories.

His son Robert Bulwer Lytton wrote poetry under the pen-name Owen Meredith. As viceroy of India in the late 1870s he presided over a famine which killed millions. His laissez-faire attitude to the suffering of his "subjects" has been described as "genocidal".

Robert's daughter Emily married Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi. She was a theosophist and acted as foster-mother to the theosophical "World Teacher" Jiddu Khrishnamurti.

Emily's daughter Mary Lutyens was Khrishnamurti's disciple and biographer. She also wrote The Lyttons in India- a book about her grandfather the viceroy.

Comments

[oakmouse]

You would think that, yes, but not so. Maybe because good old Aleister Crowley got there first? From his time onward, nobody needed to look any further for an occult Bad Boy to emulate.