Disraeli: A Brief Life

By Paul Smith

Book Overview

This concise study of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) focuses on the substantial reassessment of Disraeli's career and personality that is currently taking place. Particular reference is made to the role played in Disraeli's conception of life and politics by his Jewishness and his romanticism. The book also seeks to understand Disraeli in a European as well as a British frame of thought. These new elements are set alongside all the principal biographical features of Disraeli's life and career. This brief life can therefore be read both as a standard, up-to-date biography of one of the greatest statesmen of the later Victorian age and as a reinterpretation of key aspects of Disraeli's life and times.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521381509
• ISBN13: 9780521381505
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Too Brief Biography

Paul Smith attempts the impossible - to write a brief life - of the complex, remarkable and enigmatic Jewish politician and author Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Smith almost pulls it off but another 50 or so pages would have given him much more scope to portray Disraeli's major contributions to the politics of identity, social and political reform and the recognition of the inevitability of working class emancipation. Smith allows his fascination with Dizzy's Jewishness and "outsider" status to overwhelm the other facets of his character and beliefs. Part of Dizzy's greatness as a politician was the ability to simultaneously portray himself as the ultimate outsider and the loyal, patriotic "insider." Until the election of Ramsey MacDonald as the first Labour Prime Minister in the 1920s, Disraeli stands alone as the most unlikely Prime Minister Britain ever had. Smith's book includes some good quotes from commentators such as Gladstone and Michael Foot. A book deserving a fuller treatment in its second edition but still a very useful introduction to its subject for young students of 19th century history.