Subjects
The Early Novels of Benjamin Disraeli
General Introduction: Daniel R Schwarz
Volume Editors: Geoffrey Harvey, Ann R Hawkins, Miles A Kimball, Jeraldine Kraver, Charles Richmond, Michael Sanders
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 736 0: 234x156mm: £495.00/$875.00
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) was one of the most important political figures in nineteenth century Britain. However, before rising to political prominence he had already established himself as a major literary figure.
Disraeli's novels have been identified as a key biographical source; ‘My works are my life’ wrote Disraeli. ‘They are all written from my own feelings and experience’. Within the first trilogy, Vivien Grey (1826–7) is a coded account of his own burst of manic activity over the fiasco of the Representative newspaper. Contarini Fleming (1832) is even more revealing. Subtitled A Psychological Auto-biography, this bildungsroman contains a detailed account of Disraeli’s mental breakdown of 1826-30, and his attempt to cure himself by going on the Grand Tour. Scholars are only now realising how true the book is to Disraeli’s own experiences, hailing it as an early example of the ‘writing cure’. Likewise, The Young Duke (1831) contains revealing passages of self-analysis and depression. Henrietta Temple (1837) is an account of Disraeli’s love affair with Henrietta Sykes and remains the best account still available of the relationship, as his letters to Henrietta have been destroyed.
This is the first critical edition of all of Disraeli's novels. It builds on the work of pioneering Disraeli scholars in the light of modern archival, literary and historical research and represents an important contribution to Romantic studies. The new edition includes all significant lifetime variants, full editorial apparatus and consolidated index. When Disraeli reissued his novels in the 1850s he chose to cut out potentially embarrassing or damaging passages. For example he removed references to his depression from a later edition of The Young Duke. The new collection points out the altered passages alongside explanatory notes on the changes.
- All texts reset
- All significant lifetime variants included
- Full scholarly apparatus
- Consolidated index
Contents
Volume 1
Vivian Grey (1826–7)
Volume 2
The Young Duke (1831)
Volume 3
Contarini Fleming (1832)
Volume 4
Alroy (1833)
Volume 5
Henrietta Temple (1837)
Volume 6
Venetia (1837)
Reviews
‘These Pickering and Chatto editions are the first to collate all the different editions that appeared in Disraeli’s lifetime. They show what his twenty and thirty-year-old self had dared to put into print as well as what his forty-year-old self took out and tried to hush up. For four of the six novels, comparison of the different editions now be made for the first time. All six have detailed endnotes as well as new scholarly introductions, expertly placing the works in a hitherto uncertain literary territory somewhere between the Romantics and the heyday of Dickens.’
– William Kuhn, Times Literary Supplement