Charles Dickens: the writer of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol is one of the most iconic figures in literary history. His social commentary and vibrant characters gave rise to the term ‘Dickensian’, meaning that something inspires a reminder of the author’s work. Dickens is truly one of the greats.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: a politician and writer whose career ran simultaneous to Dickens’s. He coined such monumental phrases as “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and “It was a dark and stormy night”. The latter marked the opening of one of the most convoluted first sentences in a novel ever published: “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”. Such garish and long-winded writing has led to Bulwer-Lytton being branded as The Worst Writer of All Time. There’s even a competition which asks readers to write the worst opening sentence to the worst novel imaginable in his honour.
But if you were to put examples of writing from both authors in front of anyone from literary professors to book-phobes, would anyone really be able to tell the difference?
It’s a question Mikhail Simkin presumed to answer back in 2013.
Simkin hosted a quiz on his website, Reverent Entertainment, asking participants to select whether they believed a sample of writing came from Dickens or Bulwer-Lytton.
His findings, published by The Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, found that the average score of the 9461 people who took the test was 48.2%, or around 50/50.
“I began this paper with the question: Are the famous writers different from their obscure colleagues? The answer is: Yes, they have more readers,” concludes Simkin.
On the surface, it seems to make sense. 50/50 is tantamount to guessing, which is what Simkins believes everyone who undertook the test was doing. There’s just one problem:
He’s totally wrong.
First of all, to call Bulwer-Lytton the worst author of all time is a ludicrous stretch. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is entirely tongue-in-cheek. Yes, the famous line reads like incoherent rambling, but so too does the writing of James Joyce. It’s no different, especially in terms of how many readers the writers have, to calling J.K. Rowling the worst author for her ‘he said, she said’ style of dialogue, or Dan Brown’s ludicrous phrasing. Ultimately, people will overlook these issues for a good story, and it was story that made Bulwer-Lytton a hugely popular writer of the Victorian era.
Speaking of the Victorian era, the way in which both Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton was contextualised for audiences reading their work 150 years ago. To expect nearly 10,000 quiz-takers to pick up on their nuances when the style is already unfamiliar to them is simply poor control group management. Of course it appears like people were guessing; they were guessing!
This experiment serves as a reminder to aspiring writers that uniqueness is what matters most to an audience. For all the Simkins calling Bulwer-Lytton the worst writer ever, there are many others who are inspired by him. One of those was Bram Stoker, who came up with Dracula after reading A Strange Story.
Don’t try to be like any other writer. You never can be. Find your voice, and you will find your audience. That’s what really matters.