There is no Victorian woman who wrote more fascinating, scandalous and irreverent letters than Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1802-82). Over her long life, she produced over 800 letters, thirteen novels, a collection of essays, her memoir entitled A Blighted Life (1881) and several pamphlets and broadsheets. Born and brought up in Ireland and Guernsey, Rosina Bulwer Lytton regarded herself as an outsider to British society, hence her attacks on the national character and her eagerness to pillory figures within high society. Her correspondence (1825-61) opens up a vista on her extraordinary life and times during the late Regency and early Victorian eras. The letters constitute a unique and important record, revealing the innermost workings of the literary and political establishment, with reference to a substantial number of leading figures who featured in her own social circle: Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Lady Blessington, Lady Caroline Lamb, Letitia Landon (the poet L E L), Dr John Conolly and Wilkie Collins. Furthermore they chart the disintegration of a society marriage from the perspective of a struggling woman novelist, who has been cast out from society and reduced from prosperity to relative poverty. Moreover the Collected Letters of Rosina Bulwer Lytton will rectify the distorted view of her as the 'mad' wife of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton by revealing the dazzling wit of a courageous literary woman, who was out of step with the mores of Victorian England. The three volumes of this collection will make available all of Rosina Bulwer Lytton's known letters, almost all of which are previously unpublished.

Only a tiny fraction of Rosina's letters has ever been published and this was in 1914. Most of the letters transcribed are privately owned and the editors have given them all full scholarly annotation and context. The collection will be of interest to scholars and researchers in departments of English, History and Women's Studies, Victorian Studies, History of Madness and Women's Writing.