Charles Dickens… or the world's worst writer? Blind reading test found 48% couldn't tell difference between literature great and ridiculed novelist

One is feted the world over as a titan of English literature; the other is ridiculed as a byword for clunky, artless fiction.

But can anyone tell the difference?

A new study has found that people really are none the wiser about whether they're reading a Charles Dickens masterpiece or one of the works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, billed as 'the worst writer in history'.

In a university experiment, more than 9,000 people worldwide were presented with a dozen passages from the novels of the two Victorian authors.

People are none the wiser about whether they're reading a Charles Dickens masterpiece or one of the works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, billed as 'the worst writer in history'

Then they were asked to identify which was the soaring prose of Dickens and which were penned by his unfortunate contemporary.

Startlingly, the average score was a meagre 5.78, meaning that only 48 per cent of answers were correct and respondents would have done better by simply tossing a coin.

To eliminate any suggestion of snobbishness, the researchers also isolated the responses of those at prestigious universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale.

However, even among the educational elite, the success rate rose only to 50 per cent.

Last night, Dickens diehards defended the author's work.

Cyril Baldwin, organiser of the Rochester Pickwick Club in Kent which commemorates the author, said: 'There's great empathy, warmth and humour in Dickens' prose and he shows tremendous invention in his use of words.



'Almost every sentence can stand alone and be appreciated; there's no waffle or padding. All this is missing from Bulwer-Lytton's writing.'

Mr Baldwin added: 'People would queue and clamour at the newsagents to get their hands on the next instalments of Dickens' novels. No author before or since has been able to command such popularity.

'His characters were - and still are - instantly recognisable so readers have always been able to relate to them.

'And his social commentary was quite radical. His descriptions were believable because he'd lived it, seen it and walked the streets of London himself. His sharp eye for detail was remarkable.'

The workhouse scene from the 1948 film of Oliver Twist which starred Robert Newton with Francis L Sullivan, Alec Guinness, Henry Stephenson, Kay Walsh and Mary Clare

The study by University of California academic Mikhail Simkin is published in the latest edition of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics.

It states: 'One can suspect that, similar to highly-cited scientists, highly-popular writers can become such as a result of the ordinary laws of chance.

'One way to check that is to see if people can appreciate the prose of a famous writer when his name is detached from it.

'Edward Bulwer-Lytton [has] an annual wretched-writing contest established in his honour.

'In contrast, Charles Dickens is one of the best writers ever. Can one tell the difference between their prose?'

A quiz entitled 'Great Prose Or Not?' was put online, allowing people from around the world to hazard a guess at which of twelve passages were written by Dickens and which by Bulwer-Lytton.

Lines were taken from the former's classic novels such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield but also from the latter's more obscure efforts Eugene Aram and Paul Clifford.

In all, 9,461 subjects took part but of 113,532 answers, fewer than half were correct.

The report reveals: 'On average, a quote from Bulwer-Lytton was selected as Dickens (or great prose) by 52 per cent of quiz-takers, while a quote from Dickens was selected as Dickens by only 48 per cent.”

Respondents' computer IP addresses also allowed researchers to narrow down answers given by those located at English-speaking universities.



'Edward Bulwer-Lytton [has] an annual wretched-writing contest established in his honour. In contrast, Charles Dickens is one of the best writers ever. Can one tell the difference between their prose?'

Among those 602 people, the average correct score was slightly lower at 5.76.

A total of 76 people at top universities, including Oxbridge and the Ivy League, took part and fared little better.

The study states: 'The difference between the elite and general scores is statistically insignificant.'

A giant of Victorian literature, Dickens's works are still regarded as some of the greatest stories ever told in the English language.

In tales such as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Bleak House, the former journalist created a host of vivid characters ripe for the reader's contempt, pity or ridicule, some of which – Fagin, Scrooge, Micawber, for example – have passed into everyday language.

But his novels were also peppered with sharp wit and touching social comment as they documented the depths of grinding poverty of urban life during the Industrial Revolution.

The first few words of A Tale Of Two Cities have become well known in their own right: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...”.

And it is for an opening line that Bulwer-Lytton has become famous too; his 1830 book Paul Clifford begins with the wooden phrase, 'It was a dark and stormy night...'

Those seven words have since been lampooned by Peanuts cartoonist as a favourite of his dog Snoopy and are the inspiration for an annual prize awarded by the English department of San Jose University in California.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges all-comers to produce an even worse opening to a novel.

Organiser Professor Scott Rice has condemned Bulwer-Lytton's work as 'really show[ing] us something of the nature of true badness'.

'[It is] hard to read, his characters are one-dimensional, they are not psychologically interesting and there is a lifeless formality to them.'

Born into the gentry in 1803 – nine years earlier than Dickens – Edward Bulwer was a Cambridge-educated politician who rose to Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Writing was his first passion, though, and became an obsession which ruined his marriage.

While his novels achieved popularity, they fell short of earning lasting renown.

However, Bulwer is credited with coining two everyday phrases: 'the great unwashed' from Paul Clifford and 'the pen is mightier than the sword' from his 1839 play Richelieu.

Shortly before being elevated to the peerage, he added his mother's maiden name to form his double-barrelled surname.

Ironically, both Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton are buried within yards of each other at Westminster Abbey.