Rosina, Lady Bulwer-Lytton, was born Rosina Doyle Wheeler in Ireland in 1802. She was a novelist and a political radical in favor of Irish Independence.
Rosina's mother, Anna Wheeler, wrote a book titled "Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men"; Anna Wheeler was also politically active among the Irish radical movement.
Rosina was a friend of Fanny Trollope, Anthony Trollope's mother, and close friends with Lady Caroline Lamb and other free-thinkers. Through Caroline Lamb, she met Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and married him in 1827. Bulwer-Lytton's mother opposed the marriage and cut him off financially.
Their marriage was notoriously awful. Sources diverge: the standard story is that, because of their poverty, Bulwer-Lytton had to work so hard at writing that he neglected his family. Rosina's story is that he was abusive; that she wrote many of his novels; and that when she disagreed in public with his politics, he had her committed to an insane asylum.
In 1833 the couple separated; in 1836 their separation became legal. Till her death in 1882, Rosina continued to publically protest her husband's treatment of her.
Works by Rosina, Lady Bulwer-Lytton (most published under the name Mrs. Lytton Bulwer):
- A Blighted Life; A True Story
- Chevely; or, The Man of Honour (1839)
- The Budget of the Bubble Family
- The Prince Duke and the Page (1841)
- Bianca Capello: An Historical Romance (1842)
- Memoirs of a Muscovite (1844)
- The School for Husbands (1852)
- Behind the Scenes (1854)
- Very Successful (1856)
- The World and His Wife (1858)
- Shells from the Sands of Time (1876)