Madwoman in the Attic #10 Rosina Bulwer Lyttton

Rosina Bulwer Lytton was born Rosina Doyle Wheeler on November 4th 1802 in Co Limerick. Her mother Anna Doyle Wheeler was a writer and an advocate of women's rights who married Francis Massey Wheeler when she was just sixteen. The marriage was unhappy. Wheeler was an abusive alcoholic and  his wife defied convention by leaving him. She took ten year old Rosina and her sister Henrietta to Guernsey where her uncle General Sir John Doyle was Lieutenant Governor. She later moved to London to further the girls' education. Rosina spent some time at The renowned Mrs Rowden's school for young ladies in Kensington. Other famous students of Mrs Rowden were Lady Caroline Lamb, the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.), Emma Roberts and Anna Maria Fielding. 

Rosina married Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1827, despite his parents objections. His parents stopped his allowance and the subsequent financial pressure caused substantial strain on the marriage. They separated in 1836 and although Rosina was initially allowed to keep her two children, they were taken from her two years later. The relationship with her husband remained acrimonious and Rosina denounced her husband publicly for his treatment of her. She was prevented from seeing her children who were sent away to the country to be raised. She never saw her daughter again; Emily died when she was twenty. In 1858 Bulwer-Lytton had Rosina placed in an asylum but following public outcry she was released. Her autobiography A Blighted Life detailed this experience but the book caused a public and painful rift with her son. 

Rosina was the author of almost twenty books. The first Cheveley or The Man of Honour in 1839 was hugely successful, especially as the hero; a brutish, philandering aristocrat was a thinly disguised portrait of her husband. She struggled to find that level of success again and it seems likely that her husband used his influence in the publishing world to prevent her work appearing in print. Many of her novels were historical. She lived on the continent for some time in straitened circumstances but eventually returned to Britain and due to the rift with her son lived almost as a recluse until her death in 1882.