Elizabeth Barbara Lytton

Who was Elizabeth Barbara Lytton?

Elizabeth Barbara Bulwer-Lytton was a member of the Lytton family of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England. During her marriage to General William Earle Bulwer, the couple lived at Heydon Hall in Norfolk. In 1811, a few years after his death, 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. She lived there 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. 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.

Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton's parents were Richard Warburton-Lytton and Elizabeth Jodrell.