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Benjamin Disraeli (1804‒1881): His Lives and Afterlives (Colloque de la SFEVE 25-26 février 2024)

Introduction

Emily Jones, Catherine Marshall, Seamus Perry et Miles Taylor

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Image courtesy of the personal collection of Robert M. Fells and used by permission

1Since the bicentenary of his birth in 2004, Benjamin Disraeli continues to occupy the gaze of the modern scholar. Although less is written about him than other British Prime Ministers, particularly William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, there is more disciplinary range and diversity in Disraeli studies, reflecting the numerous facets to this captivating historical subject. In the last two decades there have been at least ten new biographies, three more volumes of his edited correspondence, two library exhibitions, and a variety of books and articles considering his Jewishness, novels, different phases of his political career (‘young England’, his two premierships, foreign and imperial affairs), his status as a celebrity, and visual representations including caricature and portraiture. And yet there is more to say.

2Benjamin Disraeli (1804‒1881): his lives and afterlives is a miscellany of new work about Disraeli derived from an international two-day colloquium held in Paris in January 2024, and organised by colleagues from CY Cergy Paris Université, the universities of Oxford and Manchester, and the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. We have also included some specially commissioned essays. Our special issue focuses on two main themes. Firstly, the ways in which Disraeli during his lifetime both shaped his own image and public personality, and had his reputation forged by others. As a novelist and essayist, and through his political speeches, Disraeli projected different personae and identities, many of which became part of his performative repertoire as a public figure for over a half-century. At the same time, Disraeli was frequently the object of animosity and admiration, ridicule and reverence, to the extent that what other interlocutors and commentators said about him is as relevant in our understanding of the man, as his own self-fashioning. Second, we look at Disraeli’s legacy after his death in 1881. Over the years, he has been portrayed in the press, in caricatures, in plays, and, later on in the 20th century, in films and on radio and TV, in various versions: a dandy, a chancer, an oriental Jew, an admirer of Queen Victoria, a wise venerable man, a romantic wit, the inspiration for the Primrose League and many more. These representations created a set of myths about Disraeli, an afterlife which often tells us more about the culture and politics of the 20th and early 21st centuries than it does about the Victorian era.

3The editors would like to express their gratitude to the following people for participating in the original event: Agnès Alexandre, Baptiste Daniel, Megan Dent, Daisy Hay, Balkis Mougou, Jennifer Pitts, Frank Rynne and Mike Sanders. Particular thanks go to Laurence Roussillon-Constanty, President of the Société Française d’Études Victoriennes et Édouardiennes, the University of Chicago Center in Paris for supporting and hosting the colloquium, the AGORA research centre and CY Advanced Studies at CY Cergy Paris University, the Société Française d’Histoire Politique, and the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for financing the conference. Our final thanks go to Simon Green for arranging for the posthumous publication of the essay by Tommy Pritchard.

4January 2025

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Crédits Image courtesy of the personal collection of Robert M. Fells and used by permission
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Emily Jones, Catherine Marshall, Seamus Perry et Miles Taylor, « Introduction »Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens [En ligne], 101 Printemps | 2025, mis en ligne le 07 avril 2025, consulté le 16 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cve/15446 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13qsv

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