In recent years we have witnessed a small but noteworthy revival of interest in the political life and literary works of Benjamin Disraeli. In addition to biographies by Stanley Weintraub (1993) and Paul Smith (1996), two important essay collections have appeared: The Self Fashioning of Disraeli, 1818–1851, ed. Charles Richmond and Paul Smith (Cambridge, 1998), and Disraeli's Jewishness, ed. Todd Endelman and Tony Kushner (2002). In this most recent, and much needed, addition to the Disraeli revival, Michael Flavin offers a study not just of a man with two careers but an analysis of the relations between those careers. Although numerous studies have extracted, with varying degrees of success, aspects of Disraeli's life reflected in his novels, Flavin is the first to make this the focus of a book-length study. If this study does not always account for the causes for the evolution of Disraeli's political theories, it certainly makes a compelling and informative case for the interplay between Disraeli's public roles as an author and politician.
Flavin notes from the start that he has not written a biography. His book is rather a literary study in which he examines the progression of Disraeli's political ideas, from a youthful idealistic visionary to a practical and realistic politician, as they appear in Disraeli's fiction. This is a persuasive argument, as it grows from propositions few would refute—people mature, people change, and it takes time for people to work out their ideas. Flavin takes this further by building on Smith's claim in his biography that novels were more than just a space in which Disraeli articulated a political philosophy; they were, according to Smith, “‘the principle medium of his [Disraeli’s] pursuit, not only of fame, but of himself ” (quoted in Flavin, 29). In an in-depth analysis of all of Disraeli's published work, Flavin demonstrates that novels by Disraeli do not merely reflect this transition but contributed to his political development by offering a space in which to try on and work out his political theories.
Benjamin Disraeli is divided into three long chapters. The first, “The Young Man,” details Disraeli's early literary works—novels, short fiction, poetry, and drama—which were written during the 1820s and 1830s, before Disraeli's political career. In his discussions of Vivian Grey, The Young Duke, Venetia, and Alroy, Flavin shows how these novels reveal Disraeli's “struggle for a cohesive identity which would allow him to realize his ambitions” (2). Chapter 2, “The Young Englander,” examines the better-known stage of Disraeli's literary career in a discussion of the political trilogy, Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred, followed by a reading of Disraeli's biography, Lord George Bentinck. This section argues that novels from this intermediary stage of his career helped Disraeli to imagine and articulate his Young England philosophy. The final section, “The Elder Statesman,” offers a cogent analysis of Disraeli's final novels, Lothair and Endymion, as well as his unfinished Falconet. This final section is particularly noteworthy for providing a much-needed discussion of this final stage of Disraeli's writing career. Chapter 3 also places these late novels, especially Lothair, within the longer trajectory of Disraeli's novel writing, especially with regard to Tancred. Each chapter contains a subsection in which Flavin offers a plot synopsis of Disraeli's published works and an explanation of the ways in which that philosophy, as charted in the novels, changed over time.
Flavin's study will be tremendously useful for readers who seek a fuller knowledge of Disraeli's literary activity and its influence on his political life. Flavin assumes that readers may know nothing of these fictional works, which seems wise given that many have been out of print for well over thirty years. He is also strong in discussions of the Young England movement and in readings of Disraeli's later fiction. One of the traps of such a well-focused study, however, is that Flavin's analysis is at times not far reaching enough. For example, Flavin traces Disraeli's evolution from an early idealistic interest in Byron and Shelley (as witnessed in Venetia) to a more mature belief in the socially ameliorative potential of the aristocracy. While it may be true that Disraeli outgrew Byron, Flavin neglects to mention that everyone else did as well. In reading Disraeli's fiction as a cloaked autobiography, Flavin's analysis tends to overstate Disraeli's development by taking it out of the arena of Disraeli's culture or the history of the novel. In another example, while discussing Disraeli's biography of Lord George Bentinck, Flavin maintains, “While Bentinck frequently functions as a cipher in the text, behind which lies the presentation of Disraeli's own politics and strategies in Parliament in the 1840’s, his adversary, Sir Robert Peel, is a rounded character whose voice is ostensibly his own” (138). In moments like this it is clear that Flavin approaches Disraeli's writing with an eye for literary purity. As such, he believes that the biographer writes someone else's life transparently, without inculcating any of the biographer's own thoughts, opinions, or perspectives. If it were possible for authors to write without a trace of self-interest, perhaps we would have witnessed the death of literary studies rather than the death of the author.
Despite these small pitfalls, Flavin's study is helpful, insightful, and important. He does a wonderful job of making Disraeli seem real through the pages of his fiction. While conventional readings of Disraeli and his work tend to emphasize the divisions between Disraeli the author and Disraeli the politician, Flavin offers a new way of reading the intersections of these two fields. In charting the development of one of the most important figures in the nineteenth century, Flavin also invites us to consider new relationships between fact and fiction, politics and romance, and the myriad faces of public figures.
