Elizabeth Barbara Lytton

Elizabeth Barbara Bulwer-Lytton (born Elizabeth Barbara Warburton-Lytton) (1773–1843)[1][2] was a member of the Lytton family of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England.

Life

Her parents were Richard Warburton-Lytton (1745–1810) and Elizabeth Jodrell. During her marriage to General William Earle Bulwer (1757–1807), the couple lived at Heydon Hall in Norfolk.

After her father's death, Elizabeth Bulwer resumed her father's surname, by a royal license of 1811.[3] That year she returned to Knebworth House, which by then had become dilapidated. She renovated it by demolishing three of its four sides and adding Gothic towers and battlements to the remaining building. This Tudor Gothic work was carried out in 1813 by John Biagio Rebecca.[4]

She lived at Knebworth with her son, the writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, until her death. Because of a long-standing dispute she had with the local church, she is buried not with her ancestors in the churchyard but in her own mausoleum in the grounds of the house.

Elizabeth's death greatly affected her son, as described in a letter originally published in 1845, and again in a posthumous 1875 collection.[5] As to his mother, in her room, Bulwer-Lytton "had inscribed above the mantlepiece a request that future generations preserve the room as his beloved mother had used it", and which remains essentially unchanged to this day.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Cobbold DL, Knebworth House, guide book, published between 1995 & 2007
  2. ↑ Preston J, That Odd Rich Old Woman, Plush Publishing, 1998. The title is a quotation from the writer Elizabeth Benger, when she was invited to a party at Knebworth in 1826.
  3. ↑ Dod, Robert P. (1863). The Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great Britáin and Ireland for 1863 Including All the Titled Classes Twenty-Third Year. Whittaker and Company. p. 385. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  4. ↑ Howard Colvin (1978). A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840. John Murray. p. 674. ISBN 0 7195 3328 7.
  5. ↑ Lord Lytton (1875). "Confessions of a Water-Patient". in Pamphlets and Sketches (Knebworth ed.). London: George Routledge and Sons. pp. 49–75. Retrieved 28 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
  6. ↑ "Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton's Room", Knebworth House Antique Photographs, retrieved 28 November 2009
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