It was a dark and stormy night
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"It was a dark and stormy night" is a phrase penned by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.[1] The phrase itself is now understood as a signifier of a certain broad style of writing,[citation needed] characterized by a self-serious attempt at dramatic flair, the imitation of formulaic styles, an extravagantly florid style, redundancies, confusing syntax, and sentences—sometimes incorrectly dubbed run-on sentences—that are exceedingly lengthy.[citation needed] Bulwer-Lytton's original opening sentence serves as an example:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed to "celebrate" the worst extremes in this style. The contest, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing.
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[edit] Literary and media references
- Prefigurations in literature
- There is at least one literary usage of this phrase predating Bulwer-Lytton, possibly suggesting its general use as an English idiom by the early 19th century. Washington Irving in his 1809 satire The History of New York, uses it to set the scene in which Peter Stuyvesant's loyal trumpeter Antony Van Corlear meets his untimely end.
- Stormy nights (which are, of course, generally dark) are a common narrative cliché in horror and suspense films. Mad scientists like Dr. Frankenstein perform experiments under cover of the storm.
- The Romance of the Forest, written at the end of the eighteenth century by Ann Radcliffe, master of the Gothic best-seller, has the very similar phrase "The night was dark and tempestuous".
- Comic strips
- In the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, the character Snoopy was often shown to be starting yet another of many novels with the canonical phrase, or variations of it (e.g., "He was a dark and stormy knight.") The line is usually followed by something along the lines of "Suddenly, a shot rang out!" The strip first used the phrase on 12 July 1965.
- Television
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- In "The Royale", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the phrase appears as the opening line to the fictitious novel Hotel Royale. Upon reading it, Captain Picard grimaces at the overused line, and observes, "It's not a promising beginning."
- In the anime Hoshi no Kirby (Kirby of the Stars), one of the episodes is called "A Dark and Stormy Knight".[dubious ]
- In episode 303 ("Pod People") of cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow T. Robot remarks during a storm scene that "It was a dark and stormy night. I had taken a creative writing course." In episode 621 ("The Beast of Yucca Flats"), Mike Nelson can be heard uttering a take on the line ("It was a dark and boring night").
- In an episode of the American sitcom Frasier, a scene's title card reads, "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (fades to black, new card appears) No, Really".
- Board Games
The phrase is also the title of a board game, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: A Game of First Lines. The game is predicated on the first lines of books (novels, short stories, children's books, non-fiction and the like.) Players must identify the author or title of a book with only the first line as a clue.
- Translation
- In the 1941 Dodd, Mead edition (reprinted in 1997 as the Wordsworth Classic edition) and in Richard Pevear's 2006 translation of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, chapter 65 begins with this phrase. In the original French, the opening line of the chapter is C'etait une nuit orageuse et sombre.[2]
- Modern literature
- The phrase "One dark and stormy night" is used by George Sand in volume two, chapter five of Consuelo (published in 1842).
- Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time begins with this line, and is indeed the novel's entire first paragraph.
- Ray Bradbury's novel Let's All Kill Constance starts with this line.
- Radia Perlman's Network Security: PRIVATE Communication in a PUBLIC World starts with this line.
- The sentence is the title of a children's book by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. In the book the phrase is used by a young boy (Antonio) as the beginning of a story which he tells the brigands who have kidnapped him; it is also the opening sentence of the book and describes the weather outside the cave Antonio is being held in.
- Fantasy author Mercedes Lackey incorporated the line into a folk song for her Heralds of Valdemar series; the song tells the story of a minor noble woman who was a terrible singer and apparently drove her husband to homicide. The line also opens her novel, Oathbreakers. One character thinks the line, "It was a dark and stormy night," and is promptly told by another, "Must you even think in cliches?".
- The first draft of a fictional novel by amateurish self-styled writer Ollie Weeks, a fictional police detective and recurring character in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct mysteries, also begins with this line.
- Andrea Camilleri's Il birraio di Preston is an experimental novel where each chapter begins with the (adapted) incipit of some famous novel or play. One of the chapters begins with a translation in Sicilian dialect of this line.
- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman in their novel Good Omens allude to the phrase in altered satirical form, thusly - "It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime."
- Film
- Filmmaker Larry Blamire recently completed a film titled "Dark and Stormy Night," a parody of 1930s old-dark-house movies.
- In the 1987 film Throw Momma from the Train, Billy Crystal's character attempts to create variations on this line including, "The night was dry, yet it was raining", "The night was moist", and "The night was sultry" to begin his own mystery novel.
- Campfire stories
- There are many variants of a linguistic conundrum, often told to children, one of which goes, "It was a dark and stormy night, and the brigands were in their den, and the Captain said to Antonio, 'tell us a story', and this is what he said. 'It was a dark and stormy night…'"
- Music
- It is the opening line to Joni Mitchell's song "The Crazy Cries of Love".
- In Avantasia's song "Shelter from the rain", a line reads "it's a dark and stormy night"
[edit] See also
- Purple prose
- The pen is mightier than the sword, another Bulwer-Lytton line
- Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
[edit] References
- ^ Lytton, Edward Bulwer (1800s). Paul Clifford. New York: Cassell Pub. Co. OCLC 19091989.
- ^ Dumas, Alexandre (2004). "Chapter LXV: Le Jugement". Les trois mousquetaires. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13951/13951-8.txt.
