Edward Bulwer-Lytton is famous for the opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night." The contest that (someone?) used to run, in which the purpose was to write really excruciating prose, was called the Bulwer-Lytton contest. Edward Bulwer-Lytton was born on the same day as Ralph Waldo Emerson. No extant report on that day's weather. Glen Johnson Catholic Univ.