Page "Benjamin Disraeli" Paragraph 10

Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel, Vivian Grey, in 1826.

Disraeli's biographers agree that Vivian Grey was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative, and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered.

The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a " man of fashion " – someone who moved in high society.

Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous solecisms present in his otherwise brilliant and daring work made this painfully obvious.

Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book.

Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence – an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers ( notably Blake ) have sided with Murray.