Vivian Grey

Excerpt

As a novelist, Benjamin Disraeli belongs to the early part of the nineteenth century.  “Vivian Grey” (1826-27) and “Sybil” (1845) mark the beginning and the end of his truly creative period; for the two productions of his latest years, “Lothair” (1870) and “Endymion” (1880), add nothing to the characteristics of his earlier volumes except the changes of feeling and power which accompany old age.  His period, thus, is that of Bulwer, Dickens, and Thackeray, and of the later years of Sir Walter Scott—­a fact which his prominence as a statesman during the last decade of his life, as well as the vogue of “Lothair” and “Endymion,” has tended to obscure.  His style, his material, and his views of English character and life all date from that earlier time.  He was born in 1804 and died in 1881.