Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was an Eighteenth Century English novelist, playwright, and politican who coined the famous phrases "the pen is mightier than the sword" (from his play Richelieu, 1839) and "It was a dark and stormy night," the first line from his novel Paul Clifford (1830). He sat in Britain's Parliament for nine years and the science fiction and occult nature of his fiction inspired theosophical works, and his 1862 novel A Strange Story is said to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.

H.P. Lovecraft had this to say about Bulwer-Lytton:

"At this time a wave of interest in spiritualistic charlatanry, mediumism, Hindoo theosophy, and such matters, much like that of the present day, was flourishing; so that the number of weird tales with a 'psychic' or pseudo-scientific basis became very considerable. For a number of these the prolific and popular Edward Bulwer-Lytton was responsible; and despite the large doses of turgid rhetoric and empty romanticism in his products, his success in the weaving of a certain kind of bizarre charm cannot be denied. 'The House and the Brain,' which hints of Rosicrucianism and at the malign and deathless figure perhaps suggested by Louis XV's mysterious courtier St. Germain, yet survives as one of the best short haunted-house tales ever written."