Introduction
After his resignation from the ministry in 1868, Disraeli returned once again to literature. On 2 May 1870, Longmans, Green and Co. published his new novel in three volumes, Lothair, which blended the silver-fork convention of his earlier novels with reflections on the Catholic and the Anglican Churches as the competing heirs to Judaism, the influence of secret societies in politics, and on the question of the unification of Italy. Lothair was such a successful novel that Charles Dickens spoke publicly of Disraeli’s great return to the ‘Brotherhood of Literature’ (Braun 4). The first 2,000 copies sold out immediately and the editor, Thomas Longman, decided to print additional 7,000 copies, which were also sold within the next few days. Altogether eight editions of Lothair had been issued in England by the end of 1870 and a dozen more in the next decades. After its publication, the New York Times reported that Disraeli’s new novel had become a literary sensation in London. The American publisher Appleton devised a plan to have the whole text of Lothair sent down to him through the transatlantic telegraph in order to speed up its publication. However, the directors of the Associated Cable Companies advised him that it was not feasible because the transmission of a three-volume novel would halt all other telegraph traffic between Britain and the United States for several days. Finally, he decided to wait for the sea shipment of the book from London. Until the end of October 1870, some 70,000 copies of Lothair were sold in America (Pionke 121).
Lothair-mania
The novel, which reinvigorated both Disraeli’s literary fame and his political career, sparked Lothair-mania in both Europe and America. Lothair became the favourite topic of almost every drawing-room discussion in both Britain and America. Commercial products, including a perfume, a racehorse, and a clipper ship were given the name of the eponymous hero, and in 1876 the London Metropolitan Board of Works named one of the streets in Wandsworth as Lothair Street. Baron Rothschild, a friend of Disraeli’s, named his race champion filly Corisande, after one of the heroines of the novel, the future wife of Lothair. Coincidently, Disraeli’s arch-rival, William Gladstone, published a book a year earlier, in 1869, titled Juventus Mundi, The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age, which was a serious study of Homer and his time. However, as a work of scholarship and not fiction like Lothair, it sold rather poorly. Royalties from Lothair brought Disraeli at least 7,500 pounds. An almost simultaneous collected edition of his earlier novels that appeared in the autumn of 1870, gave him additionally 3,100 pounds, bringing his total earnings in 1876 to about 10,600 pounds, which would now equal to an amount of some £700,000 (Leonard 149). In the General Preface to the collected edition, Disraeli wrote without false modesty that the book had been ‘more extensively read both by the people in the United Kingdom and the United States than any work that has appeared for the last half-century (Braun 5). Lothair was so popular in America that Bret Harte published a full-length parody called Lothaw: or, The Adventures of a Young Gentleman in Search of a Religion (1871).
A political Bildungsroman
The novel, which Disraeli set in the years 1866-1868, recounts the adventures and spiritual dilemmas of a young Scottish aristocrat Lothair, apparently a marquis, who — after the death of his parents — was brought up by two guardians – his strict Presbyterian uncle, Lord Culloden – and a clergyman, who later ‘seceded from the Anglican communion and entered the Church of Rome’ to became a cardinal (allusion to Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, 1808-1892). The book is full of enjoyable descriptions of fashionable people and places, and contains reminiscences from Disraeli’s youthful travels to Italy, the Mediterranean, and Jerusalem. However, the main message of the novel is clearly political. Against the backdrop of the romance plot, Disraeli presents a gallery of English aristocrats, Roman prelates, and Continental revolutionaries. His aim was to expose a conflict between the forces of tradition represented by the Anglican and Catholic Churches, and the forces of revolutionary nationalism represented by Garibaldi fighting for Italian unification. The conflict of the plot revolves around the question whether Lothair will accept Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism as his true religion, or whether he will even swerve towards atheistic republicanism.
As a Bildungsroman in the manner of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795-96), Lothair illustrates the gradual maturation of the eponymous hero who tries desperately to find a new source of spiritual authority and his proper place in the world. He undergoes a journey of self-realisation during which he becomes the object of active interest from three beautiful young women of different backgrounds: Lady Corisande (Anglican), Clare Arundel (Catholic), and Theodora Campion (radical republican), who try to exert influence on him so that he can find his true vocation. The title character of Lothair was loosely modelled on the third Marquess of Bute (John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 1847-1900), a landed aristocrat, industrial magnate, antiquarian, scholar, and a philanthropist – one of the richest heirs in the world, who was converted to Catholicism in 1868 at the age of twenty-one. His conversion was masterminded by a certain Monsignor Thomas John Capel (1836-1911), who hoped to manipulate Bute’s future political career for the benefit of the Roman Church.
The political role of religion
In Lothair, Disraeli is concerned with the political role of religion and the subversive activities of secret societies. Throughout the nineteenth century England was a Christian country with the Anglican Church as the preserver of state religion. The only substantial non-Christian faith was Judaism. As Anglicanism was the official religion in England, the rise of non-Anglican Protestant denominations — including Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers – as well as the growing popularity of the Catholic Church in England caused a considerable controversy and apprehension among the Anglicans. In particular, the Catholics were viewed by them with suspicion. In 1850, Pope Pius IX reestablished the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, which Disraeli strongly criticised in Parliament. Further decrees made by the Vatican Council in 1869-1870, which declared the Pope infallible in matters of faith, dismayed the Anglican Church and provoked anti-Catholic sentiments among the Protestant intellectuals and writers. One of the most sensitive issues at that time was the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland, which led to the end of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, the political, economic and social domination of a minority of Protestant landowners, Protestant clergy and members of the Church of Ireland. Disraeli vigorously opposed William Gladstone's plan to break the link between church and state — the Anglican Church of Ireland. He even called an election in November 1868 on the church question because he suspected that Roman Catholics had conspired with Gladstone. However, contrary to his expectations, Gladstone’s Liberal Party won a majority of 112 votes in the House of Commons and Disraeli had to step down. As of 1 January 1871, during Gladstone’s ministry, Parliament disestablished the Church of Ireland as the state church. Disraeli feared that it would threaten the position of the established Churches in England and Scotland and would undermine the Act of Union. Besides, he was convinced that there was a network of secret societies covering the Continent, which also threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom.
The character of Roman Catholic Cardinal Grandison in Lothair was Disraeli’s revenge on Cardinal Manning, who supported Gladstone’s bill to disestablish the Irish Church. He is shown as a sinister and foolish figure, who ‘swans about the drawing rooms of London in a watered silk-scarlet ferraiolo scheming to convert duchesses to his creed’ (Wilson 98). ‘The fundamental criticism that Disraeli makes of Cardinal Grandison and Lady St. Jerome is not that they are members of a church that engages in dubious enterprises to win further converts, but that they have abandoned the traditions of their own country in favor of foreign ones’ (Clausson 466). Their attempts to convert Lothair to Catholicism are shown as seduction. As Maureen Moran has pointed out, ‘Clare is certainly a dangerous Catholic schemer, craftily seducing Lothair into the arms of the Church through female charms’ (194).
Secret societies and Roman Catholic conspiracy
Disraeli as an MP and next Prime Minister was becoming increasingly obsessed with the subversive activities of various secret societies in Europe and Britain. In a speech in the House of Commons in 1856, he claimed:
There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House... I mean the secret societies. It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads... They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated institutions... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil, and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments... [Hansard, 773-74]
In Lothair, Disraeli mentions a number of real and fictional secret societies, such as the Carbonari, the Jesuits, the Fenians, the Atheists, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Mary Anne societies (no relation to Mary Anne Lewis – Disraeli’s wife), Madre Natura, ‘the oldest, the most powerful, and the most occult, of the secret societies of Italy’, and an organisation called the Standing Committee of the Holy Alliance of the Peoples. The purpose of Lothair was, it seems, to alert the self-complacent and apathetic Anglican establishment to the rise of two potentially dangerous forces in Europe, the radical secret societies and the Church of Rome, which might lure young Englishmen of the noblest birth into ‘alien’ and godless ideologies. ‘In Disraeli’s story, his eponymous hero is briefly snared by what are presented as two semi-pagan revivals: a pantheistic brotherhood bent on overthrowing Europe’s national monarchies and a Roman Catholic conspiracy to establish universal papal authority’ (McKelvy 180).
Surrounded by Roman Catholic priests who try to be guides through his spiritual enlightenment, Lothair is increasingly engrossed in religious matters and begins to meditate about the reconciliation of Christendom and his role in this upright endeavour. He even plans to build in Westminster a big cathedral that both Catholics and Protestants would attend. He is excited about his new experience and concludes that ‘life must be religion’ (56). Lothair feels irresistibly drawn to Clare Arundel’s spirituality and devotion and due mostly to her charm, he participates in the Roman services during the Holy Week with the St. Jerome family, and even thinks of converting to Catholicism. However, he is quite astounded by her bellicose determination to serve the Roman Catholic Church.
‘They are times for new crusades’, said Miss Arundel, with energy, ‘though it may be of a different character from the old. If I were a man, I would draw my sword for Christ. There are as great deeds to be done as the siege of Ascalon, or even as the freeing of the Holy Sepulchre’. [51]
During a dinner in the house of his solicitor, Mr. Giles, Lothair meets for the first time two people who will exert an important influence on his spiritual and intellectual development: his second guardian, Cardinal Grandison, a former cleric, who ‘went to Rome’ and thus deserted the Anglican faith, and Theodora, the wife of an American colonel and a friend of Garibaldi, a remarkable woman who combines the features of Margaret Fuller and Jeanne d’Arc. The Cardinal dreams of converting England to Roman Catholicism. He is impressed with Lothair’s intelligence and wealth, which could be of use in his plan. Lothair respects the Cardinal, but he does not consider him a holy person. As a Protestant, he observes with some bewilderment and resentment that during his visit to Vauxe, the country home of the St. Jeromes, the Cardinal is welcomed with excessive reverence.
His eminence was received with much ceremony; the marshalled household, ranged in lines, fell on their knees at his approach, and Lady St. Jerome, Miss Arundel, and some other ladies, scarcely less choice and fair, with the lowest obeisance, touched, with their honored lips, his princely hand. [52]
With the help of the Catholic St. Jerome family, the beautiful Clare Arundel, and the cunning Monsignore Catesby (Capel), the Cardinal tries to convert Lothair to Roman Catholicism. The Eminence engages him in long intimate conversations on various religious and political issues in order to shape his views. He rebuts Lothair’s allegation that the Roman Catholic Church is against political freedom.
‘I cannot admit, replied the cardinal’, ‘that the Church is in antagonism with political freedom. On the contrary, in my opinion, there can be no political freedom which is not founded on Divine authority; otherwise it can be at the best but a specious phantom of license inevitably terminating in anarchy. The rights and liberties of the people of Ireland have no advocates except the Church; because, there, political freedom is founded on Divine authority; but if you mean by political freedom the schemes of the illuminati and the freemasons, which perpetually torture the Continent, all the dark conspiracies of the secret societies, there, I admit, the Church is in antagonism with such aspirations after liberty; those aspirations, in fact, are blasphemy and plunder; and, if the Church were to be destroyed, Europe would be divided between the atheist and the communist’. [200]
Lothair’s fascination with the free-thinking Theodora disappoints his Catholic friends, who hoped that he would devote his life and fortune to the Roman Catholic Church. Theodora and her husband move to Italy when they heard the news that Italian patriots try to drive the Papal troops from Rome. Lothair is so enthralled with Theodora that he is ready to sacrifice his life and fortune for the republican insurrection. In Italy, Lothair takes an active part in the Garibaldi campaign of 1867 as an aide to one of the generals. Although the first battle results in the victory over the Papal troops, Theodora is mortally wounded by a random shot and dies in Lothair’s arms asking him to promise that he will never accept the Catholic faith. In a second battle, Lothair becomes badly wounded too and is taken care of the Catholic Clare Arundel, who while wintering in Rome with her family, serves as a sister of mercy in one of the hospitals. The priests in Rome spread a rumour that Lothair was wounded while fighting on the side of the Pope, but was rescued through the mysterious intervention of the Holy Virgin so that he might play a special role in overcoming heresy and apostasy in England. He is closely guarded by the Jesuits, who hope that the young English aristocrat can be of valuable service for the Catholic cause in England. However, soon Lothair realises that he is manipulated into a Catholic plot in which Clare Arundel serves only as an innocent and naive dupe. Eventually, he ends his flirtation with Clare and, on the advice of his English doctor, flees from the Eternal City to Sicily, officially for health reasons, but really because he suspects that he may have become a target of the Roman Catholic conspiracy, led by Jesuits, to establish papal authority in England. Ultimately, he realises that ‘the battle is not between the Church and the secret societies, but the Church and the free soul of man’ (Cavaliero 205). He travels to Malta, where he meets Mr. Gaston Phoebus, a rich dandy artist modelled on the painter Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), who amuses himself to revive paganism on one of the Aegean islands. Contrary to Lothair’s ‘churchy’ friends and acquaintances, Phoebus represents pantheism, anticlericalism, moral secularism, and epicureanism, which, interestingly, foreshadows Oscar Wilde's New Hedonism.
Hebraism and Hellenism
When Lothair first met Mr Phoebus in London, he heard with bewilderment his striking racial views on Hebraism and Hellenism. Convinced of Aryan racial superiority, Phoebus tells Lothair that he admires the Aryan principles in art which were created by a ‘first-rate race’.
‘ARYAN principles’, said Mr. Phoebus; ‘not merely the study of Nature, but of beautiful Nature; the art of design in a country inhabited by a first-rate race, and where the laws, the manners, the customs, are calculated to maintain the health and beauty of a first-rate race. In a greater or less degree, these conditions obtained from the age of Pericles to the age of Hadrian in pure Aryan communities, but Semitism began then to prevail, and ultimately triumphed. Semitism has destroyed art; it taught man to despise his own body, and the essence of art is to honor the human frame’. [105]
Lothair argues that the early Italian painters were inspired by Semitic themes, but Phoebus’s repartee is striking.
Semitism gave them subjects, but the Renaissance gave them Aryan art, and it gave that art to a purely Aryan race. But Semitism rallied in the shape of the Reformation, and swept all away. When Leo the Tenth was pope, popery was pagan; popery is now Christian, and art is extinct. [105]
By Semitism Phoebus means not only Hebraism or Judaism, but also Christianity, from which it took its roots. Phoebus may be a satirical picture of the painter Frederic Leighton, who claimed that ancient Greeks were a pure Aryan race and also described the English as modern Aryans. He claimed that there was a particular resemblance of women of classical Greece and ‘Saxon women of England’ (Challis 74).
A mild satire on the English aristocracy
When Lothair frankly admits that he is extremely ignorant of worldly knowledge, Phoebus consoles him that it is his strength and the great asset of the English aristocracy, the members of which do not read, speak only one language and excel in athletic sports like the ancient Greeks.
‘Do not regret it’, said Mr. Phoebus. ‘What you call ignorance is your strength. By ignorance you mean a want of knowledge of books. Books are fatal; they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing. Printing has destroyed education. Art is a great thing, and Science is a great thing; but all that art and science can reveal can be taught by man and by his attributes – his voice, his hand, his eye. The essence of education is the education of the body. Beauty and health are the chief sources of happiness. Men should live in the air; their exercises should be regular, varied, scientific. To render his body strong and supple is the first duty of man. He should develop and completely master the whole muscular system. What I admire in the order to which you belong is that they do live in the air; that they excel in athletic sports; that they can only speak one language; and that they never read. This is not a complete education, but it is the highest education since the Greek’. [105-106]
This ironical reflection may suggest that Disraeli’s purpose in writing Lothair was not only a warning about imminent revolutions that might sweep away the existing social order in Europe, or an attempt to damage the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church, but also his deepening criticism of the English aristocracy, which is – as Disraeli’s early biographer, Anthony Froude, put it – ‘without a purpose and with no claim to endurance’ (231). The book’s sarcasm is one of its distinguishing features. Phoebus’s characterisation of the English aristocracy is ironic and derogatory. Disraeli never expressed such an opinion in his earlier novels, but in Lothair, he seems disappointed by the vacuity of the English aristocracy, which fails to take a leading role in the political and spiritual life of the country because it remains under a greater influence of the Hellenic principle than the Hebraic. In Disraeli’s view, the English nation seems to be unaware that it ‘is indebted to the Hebrew race for its religion and law’ (Borgstede 95).
‘God works by races’
When Lothair visits Phoebus on his Aegean island, where he lives a comfortable life of a Hellenist ‘in the company of his beautiful Greek wife and her equally attractive sister’ (Buckle 160), the host greets him: ‘Welcome to an Aryan clime, an Aryan landscape, and an Aryan race! It will do you good after your Semitic hallucinations’ (173). Lothair’s short sojourn on Mr Phoebus’ ‘happy island’ has a therapeutic effect on the young aristocrat. He feels relieved that he has ridden himself of the religious and revolutionary entanglements in Rome. However, he soon realises that Mr Phoebus, as an artist dedicated to ‘Aryan principles’, eventually turns out to be a hypocrite and opportunist. He gladly accepts the commission from the Russian court to paint some ‘Semitic’ scenes in Jerusalem and takes Lothair to the Holy Land, the cradle of Christianity. It is in Jerusalem that Lothair meets the ecumenical Syrian mystic Paraclete, who exerts a crucial influence on his Weltanschauung. In Greek ‘paraclete’ means advocate, counsel, or even comforter. In Christianity, the term usually refers to the Holy Spirit.
Paraclete condemns Phoebus’s sensual materialism saying that Pantheism is ‘Atheism in domino’ (313), i.e. veiled atheism, and that his ‘worship of the beautiful always ends in an orgy’ (313). He also expresses views on race that echo Disraeli’s own views. Paraclete concedes that Aryans and Semites are of the same blood and origin, and after separation they contributed differently to the development of Western civilisation.
In my Father’s house are many mansions, and by the various families of nations the designs of the Creator are accomplished. God works by races, and one was appointed in due season and after many developments to reveal and expound in this land the spiritual nature of man. The Aryan and the Semite are of the same blood and origin, but when they quitted their central land they were ordained to follow opposite courses. Each division of the great race has developed one portion of the double nature of humanity, till, after all their wanderings, they met again, and, represented by their two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together the treasures of their accumulated wisdom, and secured the civilization of man. [314]
In this statement, Disraeli repeats his views on race presented in Tancred. Through the words of Paraclete, who plays the role of a mentor, like Sidonia, Disraeli alludes to Matthew Arnold's argument in Culture and Anarchy (1869) that Victorian society has become overly ‘Hebraic’ – that it needs to correct the imbalance by ‘Hellenizing’ (Brantlinger 103). Disraeli always insisted that both British and world civilisation owed a lot to ancient and modern Hebrews (Brantlinger 104). Thanks to Paraclete, Lothair, like Tancred before him, completes his varied and often contradictory spiritual education, and emerges as a man of settled and firm political and religious convictions. Eventually, disenchanted with both Roman Catholicism and revolutionary republicanism, Lothair returns to England to breathe the pure air of the Anglican faith. His quest for identity is over. He marries Lady Corisande and becomes a respectable member of the Anglican Church. Lothair has finally learnt that he must live and act in accordance with the spiritual heritage of his country – the Church of Egland. Although he is not endowed with leadership abilities, he realises that as an aristocrat he must exhibit a high sense of duty, and is determined to contribute to a general welfare by creating an old-fashioned English garden for the pleasure of others at Muriel Towers, his inherited estate, with the aid of Lady Corisande.
Reception
In spite of its great commercial success, the book was not very well received by critics, with the exception of those in the Times and the Pall Mall Gazette. Reviewers did not really understand whether Disraeli had written a novel about the Italian Risorgimento, a religious novel, or a ‘silver-fork’ romance about elegant lifestyle. In his review of the book for the Atlantic Monthly (August 1870), Henry James observed that ‘each of the reviewers had evidently read the book in the light of a deep aversion to the author’s political character’ (Stange 207). Leslie Stephen wrote that Lothair was ‘a practical joke on a large scale, or a prolonged burlesque upon Disraeli’s own youthful performances’ (140). Edmund Gosse expressed an enthusiastic comment about the book: ‘Unquestionably the greatest of his literary works — the superb ironic romance of Lothair’ (173). Froude believed that Lothair was the most remarkable of all of his novels: ‘perhaps the first novel ever written by a man who had previously been Prime Minister of England’ (230). The eminent American scholar Morris Speare contended:
It is not a novel with any expressed or premeditated purpose, but it is rather the comment of a statesman... And being a novelist and not a biographer or/historian, Disraeli chose only to reflect out of the critical years in European history upon which this novel is based, those historical and political phenomena which interested him as a novelist (98).
Robert Blake concluded that ‘Lothair, in spite of much careless prose, especially in the early chapters, is perhaps the best constructed work from his pen’ (518). William Kuhn suggested that one of Disraeli’s purposes in writing Lothair ‘must have been to make another secret attack on Gladstone, whose sympathy for Ritualism and the High Church was well known’ (301). David Cesarani claimed that Lothair ‘contains some of Disraeli’s strangest ideas about race, but also some of his most lucid commentary on religion and science’ (128).
Conclusion
Lothair, Disraeli’s penultimate published book, revives the style of his earlier ‘silver-fork’ novels, adds elements of romance in the tradition of Walter Scott's fiction, and conveys a clear political message to the young members of the English aristocracy suggesting that they may not lose their sense of duty for the nation and ought to persevere in the Anglican faith which — as a bridge between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism — reflects the traditional values of English society. Although the novel is less political than Coningsby and Sybil, it deals persuasively with some ideological and political issues of the day, such as the rivalry between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, secret societies, Italian republicanism and Irish nationalism, the secret power of papacy, and revolutionary fervour. In Lothair, Disraeli proved that he was at the height of his literary powers.
Related material
References and Further Reading
Bebbington, David. ‘Gladstone and the Classics’, [in:] A Companion to Classical Receptions. Ed. by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 86-97.
Blake, Robert. Disraeli. London: Eyre & Spottiswode Publishers, 1967.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011
Braun, Thom. Disraeli the Novelist. Abington and New York: Routledge, 2016.
Buckle, George Earl. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield. Vol. 5. London: The Macmillan Company, 1920.
Cavaliero, Roderick. Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 2005.
Cesarani, David. Disraeli: The Novel Politician. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016.
Challis, Debbie. The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Clausson, Nils. ‘English Catholics and Roman Catholicism in Disraeli’s Novels’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 33(4) (Mar., 1979) 454-474.
Disraeli, Benjamin. Lothair. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1870.
Froude, Anthony J. Lord Beaconsfield. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890.
Gosse, Edmund. Some Diversions of a Man of Letters. London: Heinemann, 1920
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Vol. CXLIII. London: Longmans, 1856.
Kuhn, William M. The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. London: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2006.
Leonard, Dick. The Great Rivalry: Gladstone and Disraeli. London and New York: I. B.Tauris, 2013.
McKelvy, William R. The English Cult of Literature: Devoted Readers, 1774-1880. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
Moran, Maureen. Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.
Pionke, Albert D. Plots of Opportunity: Representing Conspiracy in Victorian England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004.
Schwarz, Daniel R. Disraeli’s Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Speare, Morris E. The Political Novel: Its Development in England and America. New York, Oxford Univ. Press 1924.
Stange, Robert G. “A review of Benjamin Disraeli’s Lothair.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 31(2) (Sep., 1976), 206-212.
Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library. Vol. II. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1892.
Wilson, A. N. Victoria: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2015.
Last modified 16 April 2020