Introduction

First published in 1981, this book attempts to approach a better understanding of Disraeli the man through his life as a novelist. It is not a series of literary criticisms, rather an attempt to see how fiction and the act of fictionalising played an important part in Disraeli’s life. The author discusses how Disraeli’s novels in terms of how they reflected various stages of his life and development while assuming no knowledge of the, now mostly out-of-print, books on the part of the reader. This book fills the gap between the standard and comprehensive political biographies and the few literary analyses that appeared the twenty years prior to its publication.