The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton
The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton

Author: Allan Conrad Christensen

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780874138566

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On the occasion of the bicentenary of Edward Bulwer Lytton's birth, seventeen scholars from five countries have contributed essays devoted to many aspects of his career. After the first essay that analyzes the reasons for Bulwer's extraordinary reputation in his own day, twelve of the essays focus primarily upon one or more of the novels, from Falkland (1827) to Kenelm Chillingly (1873). Other novels examined include Bulwer's The Last Days of Pompeii, The Coming Race, The Parisians, and the Caxton trilogy, as well as his Newgate novels. In the volume are also considerations of the seminal treatise England and the English (1833), the incomplete history of Athens (1837), and the achievement of Bulwer Lytton as Colonial Secretary (1858-59). Two essays, one written by a descendant of Bulwer, deal with the overshadowing disaster of his life, the marriage to Rosina Wheeler, herself a novelist whose novels sought to undermine his. Bulwer emerges from this collection of essays as a challengingly complex but coherent figure that merits the respect of contemporary students of the Victorian phenomenon.

Disraeli
Disraeli

Author: Robert Blake

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2012-04-19

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 0571287557

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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

Disraeli
Disraeli

Author: Christopher Hibbert

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-11-03

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 1250102782

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To Thomas Carlyle he was "not worth his weight in cold bacon," but, to Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli was "the kindest Minister" she had ever had and a "dear and devoted friend." In this masterly biography by England's "outstanding popular historian" (A.N. Wilson), Christopher Hibbert reveals the personal life of one of the most fascinating men of the nineteenth century and England's most eccentric Prime Minister. A superb speaker, writer, and wit, Disraeli did not intend to be a politician. Born into a family of Jewish merchants, Disraeli was a conspicuous dandy, constantly in debt, and enjoyed many scandalous affairs until, in 1839, he married an eccentric widow twelve years older than him. As an antidote to his grief at his wife's death in 1872, he threw himself into politics becoming Prime Minister for the second time in 1874, much to the Queen's delight.