Asmodeus at Large by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
May 2022
Even if you’ve never heard of Bulwer-Lytton, you’ve no doubt heard or read his infamous opening phrase from the novel Paul Clifford—“It was a dark and stormy night...”—which Charlie Brown’s Snoopy liked so much when he was trying to be an author on top of his doghouse. You may also be familiar with other Bulwer-Lytton phrases: “the great unwashed;” “pursuit of the almighty dollar;” “the pen is mightier than the sword;” etc. He was an immensely popular writer who made gobs of money selling novels—and for good measure talked Charles Dickens into changing the ending of Great Expectations so that Pip and Estella get together.
This novel, more an excuse for social commentary than a work of fiction, reprises the demon Asmodeus from the 1707 novel by French writer Alain-René Lesage, The Devil upon Two Sticks. The demon as a literary device is used in exactly the same way, as a vehicle for offering social commentary about society. In Lesage’s novel that society was Madrid’s—in this case it is the society of London and Paris.
This novel, more an excuse for social commentary than a work of fiction, reprises the demon Asmodeus from the 1707 novel by French writer Alain-René Lesage, The Devil upon Two Sticks. The demon as a literary device is used in exactly the same way, as a vehicle for offering social commentary about society. In Lesage’s novel that society was Madrid’s—in this case it is the society of London and Paris.