It was a dark and stormy night

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The phrase "It was a dark and stormy night", made famous by comic strip artist Charles M. Schulz, was originally penned by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton as the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The phrase itself is now understood as a signifier of a certain broad style of writing, characterized by a self-serious attempt at dramatic flair, the imitation of formulaic styles, an extravagantly florid style, redundancies, and run-on sentences. Bulwer-Lytton's original opening sentence serves as 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 is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, in which the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing are recognized.

1 In film
2 In popular culture
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] In film

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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.

[edit] In popular culture

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".
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.
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 very promising start, is it?"
Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time begins with this line.
In the 1987 film Throw Momma from the Train, one of the main characters attempts to create variations on this line including, "The night was dry, yet it was raining" and "The night was sultry," to begin his own mystery novel.
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.
In both the 1997 Wordsworth Classic edition and 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.
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...
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.
In the anime Hoshi no Kirby (Kirby of the Stars), one of the episodes is called "A Dark and Stormy Knight".
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").
The sentence is also 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 Antionio is being held in.