Paul Clifford — Complete

'It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents...' So begins the story of Paul Clifford, an orphan brought up in a London thieves' tavern. Wrongly sent to prison as a boy, he learns crime there, becomes the charming leader of a gang of highwaymen under the name of Captain Lovett, falls in love with the beautiful Lucy Brandon, and is finally tried before a stern judge, Lucy's uncle, who turns out to be connected to him in a way no one expected. Along the way the novel satirises politicians, lawyers and society as greater robbers than the highwaymen.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton published the novel in 1830. Its opening sentence has become famous as the classic example of overwritten prose, and a contest for the worst opening sentence is named after its author. His most famous novel is The Last Days of Pompeii; for an earlier satire on 'great' criminals, read Fielding's Jonathan Wild.