This volume collects 556 of Disraeli's letters from a tumultuous period in European history – years that witnessed the Italian revolution, the Polish revolt against Russia, anxiety about Napoleon III's intentions in Europe, and the American Civil War.

The 334 letters in this volume cover the period from Disraeli's establishment in the Tory camp under the patronage of Lord Lyndhurst to his election to parliament in 1837. The most important issue to which they speak is the course of Disraeli's political ambitions. In 1835 the road to parliament was not yet clear, for he continued to be haunted by troubles from his past. He was beset by charges of opportunism in his Taunton campaign of 1835, and the longest letters here are those to Edwards Beadon written in justification of past conduct; Disraeli had still to learn the truth of his later dictum, 'never explain.' Also, debts contracted many years before continued to plague him, as they would in years to come. He was tempted by a variety of money-making schemes and the later correspondence makes clear just how close he came to permanent ruin at the hands of his creditors in the spring of 1837. Had the fate of debtors' prison materialized it is doubtful that he would ever have been eligible, in law or in reputation, for a parliamentary career. Disraeli's eventual election for Maidstone in the summer of 1837 marked the emergence of his formal public role. Because he set out early and was a long time in attaining his goals, one is tempted to laud his patience. But the record here suggests that it was instead a matter of energy and endurance. This volume of the Letters brings Disraeli to the threshold of the Victorian era and the beginning of his career as a politician. In late 1837 he failed in his maiden speech, but all major successes lay ahead.

The private letters of a statesman are always inviting material for historians and when he has claim to literary fame as well the correspondence assumes a double significance. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) belonged to an age that gave pride of place to the written word as an instrument of both business and pleasure. This volume includes 363 letters (many previously unpublished) from his school boy days to his establishment in the Tory camp under the patronage of Lord Lyndhurst. Most prominent are Disraeli's letters to his sister, Sarah, with whom he corresponded frequently over several decades. To her he confided his hopes, interspersed with his observations and descriptions of social, literary and political events. The letters to Sarah supply a skeleton around which Disraeli's young manhood can be reconstructed and shed valuable light on the remaining documents in the volume. The correspondence also includes accounts of his tour of the Low Countries and the Rhine in 1824, his adventurous trip to Spain, Greece, the Near East and Egypt in 1830, his tense negotiations with publishers and his campaign to shine as a member of aristocratic society and win political patronage. The letters demonstrate the fine eye for detail and the capacity for self-dramatization and literary conceits which mark his novels. With their annotations they also provide a remarkably detailed account of life in the upper reaches of English society as viewed from below, and of Disraeli's ambitions to enter that life.

Part of the Jewish Encounter series A dandy, a best-selling novelist, and a man of political and sexual intrigue, Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most captivating figures of the nineteenth century. His flirtation with proto-Zionism, his ideas about power and empire, and his fantasies about the Middle East remain prophetically relevant today. How a man who was born a Jew--and who remained in the eyes of his countrymen a member of a despised minority--managed to become prime minister of England seems even today nothing short of miraculous. In this compelling biography, renowned poet and critic Adam Kirsch looks at Disraeli as a novelist as well as a statesman, recognizing that the outsider Jew who became one of the world's most powerful men was his own greatest character. Though baptized by his father at the age of twelve, Disraeli was seen--and saw himself--as a Jew. But her created an idea of Jewishness to rival the British notion of aristocracy. Disraeli was a figure of fascinating contradictions: an archconservative who benefited from England's liberal attitudes, a baptized Christian who saw Jewishness as a matter of racial superiority, a perennial outsider who dreamed of glory for England, which, in the words of one contemporary, became for Disraeli "the Israel of his imagination."

Part of the critically acclaimed Letters of Benjamin Disraeli series. This volume contains or describes letters written by Disraeli between 1848 and 1851.

The latest volume in the critically acclaimed Letters of Benjamin Disraeli series contains or describes 952 letters (778 perviously unpublished) written by Disraeli between 1852 and 1856.

Benjamin Disraeli was perhaps the most colourful Prime Minister in British history. This seventh volume of the highly acclaimed Benjamin Disraeli Letters edition shows also that he was a dedicated, resourceful, and farsighted statesman. It contains 670 letters written between 1857 and 1859. They address friends, family, political colleagues, and, not least, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. During this period, Disraeli shepherded a fragile Conservative government through the Indian Mutiny, the Second Opium War with China, the Orsini bomb plot, and the Franco-Austrian-Piedmontese War, only to fail at home over parliamentary reform. Day-by-day politics and behind-the-scenes strategy dominate, while lighter-hearted letters to friends and family reveal the private Disraeli's charm and wit. With an appendix of 115 newly found letters dating from 1825, as well as information on 219 unfound letters, full annotations to each letter, an exhaustive name-and-subject index and a comprehensive introduction, this volume will be a vital resource for new understanding of this enigmatic statesman.

Generally regarded as one of the fathers of British politics, Benjamin Disraeli remains today one of the most influential Prime Ministers in history. Though fiercely conservative (in fact, centrally involved in the creation of the modern Conservative Party), much of his work in international affairs is still admired by people of all political persuasions. Unlike most politicians of today, Disraeli had much of interest to say on the subject of philosophy, and was very outspoken in his views on mankind and life itself. He remains a much quoted figure today. This book brings together some of Disraeli’s most interesting thoughts on a number of different topics.

First published in 1966, Robert Blake's biography of Disraeli is one of the supreme political biographies of the last hundred years. An outsider, a nationalist, a European, a Romantic and a Tory - Disraeli's story is an extraordinary one. Born in 1804, the grandson of an immigrant Italian Jew, he became leader of the Conservative Party and was twice Prime Minister. Famous for the 1867 Reform Act, his purchasing of the Suez Canal and his diplomatic triumphs at the Congress of Berlin, he was also the creator of the political novel and, in Sybil, wrote the major 'Condition of England' work of fiction. 'An outstandingly successful biography . . . Disraeli has never been brought so vividly to life.' Sir Philip Magnus, Daily Telegraph 'A huge, scholarly and remarkably readable work which makes us revise vast tracts of our assumptions about nineteenth-century politics.' Sir Michael Howard, Sunday Times 'A book that people will still be reading in fifty years' time and long after.' Times Literary Supplement