Disraeli's novels merit renewed attention not only because of their wit, insight, breadth, and vision but because they present strikingly original imagined worlds. Like the other major Victorian novelists, Disraeli is a deft psychologist and a student of the manners and mores of his time; moreover, his political career gives his last five novels a unique perspective. Taken as a whole, Disraeli's novels are a considerable artistic achievement and, if quality, originality, and output are all taken into account, need only yield to the works of Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and maybe Scott among nineteenth-century novelists.

Disraeli's literary career spans over a half century, from 1826 to 1880. He published the first volumes of Vivian Grey (1826-1827) when Scott, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were still alive and before any of the major Victorians, except Carlyle, were published. He concluded his career in 1880, a year when Dickens and Thackeray...