The immediate appeal of this first-ever biography of George Smythe (1818–57) is, as the title suggests, his connection to Benjamin Disraeli. As one of the members of the Young England group that sought to reform the Conservative Party in the 1840s and helped position Disraeli as the rising Conservative challenger to Sir Robert Peel, Smythe inspired some of Disraeli's greatest literary and political works. Mary Millar's biography will certainly be indispensable for all Disraeli scholars, but its value extends beyond the realm of political history. Disraeli's Disciple is a beautifully written, exhaustively researched study that, in addition to chronicling the inner workings of Disraeli's early career, presents a riveting account of nineteenth-century aristocratic society.

Disraeli's Disciple has a typical structure for a political biography; chapters are organized chronologically, beginning with Smythe's family background and youth, climaxing with Young England, and ending with Smythe's death from consumption. Millar's methodology, however, is far from conventional. One entry from the introductory time line of Smythe's life illustrates how thoroughly Millar mixes political and social history: “1845[:] Speeches on Ireland, Corn Laws, break with Young England; gonorrhea; Oxford and Cambridge article; Geneva, disastrous love affair in Paris; Venice” (xii). With perhaps a touch of overdeterminism, Millar connects Smythe's domestic and political history, explaining how frequent moves during his youth encouraged a search for novelty, how his mother's early death spurred a series of love affairs, how his schooling established a pattern of dissipated brilliance, and how his suffering from chronic tuberculosis propelled a life of excess.

Even more methodologically innovative than this attention to Smythe's domestic life is Millar's analysis of literary texts, making Disraeli's Disciple of great value to literary scholars as well as to historians. Millar's narrative moves, at times almost too easily, back and forth from examinations of Disraeli's and Smythe's works of fiction to analyses of historical figures. Disraeli's Disciple frequently draws on fiction to describe major historical events and personalities, using, for example, passages from Disraeli's Contarini Fleming (1832) to paint a portrait of Smythe's father and selections from Coningsby (1844) to describe Smythe's first election victory. While some readers may desire more detailed analysis of how evidence drawn from fiction relates to other historical evidence in a few select cases, Millar compellingly demonstrates that Disraeli consistently based his novels on current events and on Smythe in particular. In Coningsby, Millar maintains, Disraeli presented a loving portrait of the handsome, witty, idealistic young Smythe as the hero who revives Conservatism. Only three years later, Disraeli based his villain in Tancred (1847) on Smythe, representing him as the conniving Arab sheik Fakredeen who was “ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none” (quoted on 224).

Such a dramatic change in Disraeli's relationship with Smythe illuminates the early enthusiasm and eventual limitations of the Young England movement. The group's core members—Disraeli, Smythe, Alexander Cochrane, and John Manners—generally supported a strong monarchy, political independence gained through the rejection of party positions (a point to which Smythe never agreed), and most of all an alliance between the aristocracy and the industrial poor loosely based on the group's idealization of medieval feudalism. Millar suggests that the political union was initially solidified by Disraeli's intense physical attraction to Smythe, a friendship that she characterizes as “close to love” during the time when Coningsby emerged as a best seller (173). A gifted speaker in the House, Smythe promoted the Young Englanders with Disraeli as their leader. Millar demonstrates, however, that the group displayed significant divisions even before Smythe betrayed his fellow Young Englanders in 1846 by accepting the position of undersecretary for foreign affairs under Peel. Despite their common goal to reform Conservatism, they were divided on key issues, including Ireland, free trade, and the Corn Laws.

Most Disraeli biographies provide a basic outline of Young England. What is new about Disraeli's Disciple is not Millar's account of Smythe's political contributions, although she certainly presents his political life in far greater detail than previous studies, but rather her detailed discussion of Smythe's social life. According to Disraeli, Smythe was “perhaps the most brilliant man of the day; tho’ more adapted to social & literary pursuits, than the stern business of politics” (quoted on 275). He was “an unrepentant immoralist,” who defied all stereotypes of Victorian respectability, carrying on in the brash style of Regency masculinity (221). Plagued by debt, embroiled in election bribery scandals, and implicated in numerous public disputes, Smythe reputedly fought the last duel on English soil. He mixed easily with high and low society, enjoying regular breakfasts with the Disraelis and literary dinners with the likes of Thomas Macaulay and Caroline Norton, as well as pursuing an affair with Catherine Cocks, a horse trainer with sisters in the circus who later became the Countess of Stamford. Smythe's other love interests included an intense though likely platonic romance with an Anglican priest and a long affair with a countess thirty-seven years his senior. He left several women with ruined reputations and finally agreed to marry a Scottish heiress at the house of his former mistress, then Lady Stamford, only fourteen days before his death.

Millar vividly recounts these rich details of a life that Lord Lyttelton characterized as a “splendid failure” (quoted on 12). She might have pressed on from the specifics of Smythe's life to raise broader questions about the continuation of Regency mores concerning gender, romance, and social mixing in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, it is great testimony to Millar's skill as a biographer that despite Smythe's many acts of betrayal and self-interest, readers will certainly continue to enjoy his company and genius, much like Disraeli, who singled out Smythe as “a man of brilliant gifts, of dazzling wit, infinite culture, and fascinating manners,” “one of the joys of my existence” (quoted on 10).