Disraeli's sensations for a jaded public Undaunted, Disraeli continued to churn out novels well into the 1830s. He wrote fast: necessarily so, since he was deeply in debt and always desperately in need of the next advance. His novels were frothy and designed to sell. They were also commendably experimental: each had a different theme and style. In The Young Duke he focused once more on the exploits of high society; Contarini Fleming, by contrast, was an autobiographical tale of creative and emotional isolation. He was not above exploiting his love life, either. Henrietta Temple, which sold plenty, related the tempestuous history of Disraeli's relationship with Henrietta Sykes. Venetia relied for its success on the celebrity of others, retelling the stories of Shelley and Byron and imagining a future in which the poets lived into middle age. As Disraeli produced one novel after another during the 1830s, he also made repeated attempts to get elected to Parliament. He eventually succeeded in 1837, when he was selected to stand for the Tories at Maidstone. Novel-writing was laid aside as he turned his attention to political promotion. His progress was slow. Disraeli was viewed by his colleagues with some suspicion, not least because of his reputation as a dandified novelist. His maiden speech was a disaster and, in 1841, Robert Peel refused to give him a place in his government, despite receiving a desperate plea from Disraeli's wife, Mary Anne. Disillusioned with Peel and relegated to the back benches, Disraeli began to gather a coterie of young MPs around him, yoking them into an informal parliamentary group called "Young England." "Young England" proclaimed the need for heroic political figures who would inspire the people through their genius, creativity and capacity for imaginative understanding. In 1844 Disraeli put this theory into practice, publishing his first novel since entering parliament eight years earlier. Coningsby was quite different from his previous work - although again it included portraits of many contemporaries, chief among them his Young England acolytes, Lord John Manners and George Smythe. Its focus was political, as was that of the two novels that followed it: Sybil, published in 1845 and Tancred, which appeared in 1847. These were the novels on which Disraeli staked his claim to be taken seriously as a writer, and in which he combined social and political analysis with flights of imaginative fancy. They are also novels that rise above his other work, and have something important to say about fairness and social inequality. In particular Sybil, his greatest novel, gave us one enduring political concept. Britain, wrote Disraeli in that book, is divided into "Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets: the rich and the poor." Sybil's description of the "two nations" lives on in "One Nation Conservatism" and resonates more strongly than ever today. In 1846 Disraeli's opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws brought about the downfall of Peel, and his own political ascendancy began. Novel-writing was abandoned as he became first leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons, then leader of the House, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and finally, in 1868, Prime Minister. It wasn't until he resigned as Prime Minister only a few months after taking office that he returned to fiction. This time excitement at the prospect of a new Disraeli novel was palpable. The newspapers buzzed with rumours about the new work, Lothair, for weeks before its publication. No one knew its subject (the power of the Catholic Church in England) but that was immaterial. "Mr Disraeli has provided a new sensation for a jaded public," ran one article. The English mind was startled when a retired novelist became Prime Minister. It has been not less surprised as the announcement that a retired Prime Minister is about again to become a novelist. Published in 1870, Lothair was such a success that a street in Wandsworth was renamed for it by express permission of the Board of Works, and Dickens spoke publicly of Disraeli's "illustrious" return to the "Brotherhood of Literature." Nor was Disraeli's popularity confined to Britain. One American publisher made plans to have the whole of Lothair sent down the transatlantic telegraph in order to steal a march on rival firms, only to be told by the directors of the Associated Cable Companies that the transmission of a three-volume novel would halt all other telegraph traffic between Britain and the United States for several days, and could therefore not be allowed. Ten years later, when he resigned as Prime Minister for the second time, Disraeli again returned to novel-writing to enliven his retirement. His final work, Endymion, was published in 1880 and earned him a fee of £10,000, then the largest advance ever paid for a work of fiction. Endymion revisited the scenes of his political apprenticeship in the 1830s and satirised many prominent personalities of the 19th century. The newspapers printed keys to the novel so that the public could match its characters with their real-life equivalents, and this time Disraeli extended his caricatures to his literary contemporaries. Dickens appeared in its pages as "Gushy," an unbearably sentimental novelist, and Thackeray as the discontented "St Barbe," whose satire of polite society is motivated by rage at his exclusion from its ranks. Endymion tells us something of Disraeli's views of his literary rivals, but what did they think of him? His success and celebrity generated a certain amount of envy, as did the size of his advances. Dickens was kind about him in public, recognising the affection in which he was held, but was disdainful of his politics in private, labelling him "conscience-less." Trollope loathed both the man and his work, writing in his Autobiography that his "glory has been the glory of pasteboard and the wealth of tinsel. The wit has been the wit of hairdressers, and the enterprise the enterprise of mountebanks. Was Trollope right? There is little doubt that Disraeli's novels are flawed: his heroes and heroines are paper cut-outs and his plots have a tendency to creak. Nevertheless, they also open a window on to the political and social scene of the 19th century, and overflow with gossip and intrigue. In his own way, Disraeli shaped our literary inheritance just as surely as he did our political system. He knew that the lives of the rich and famous sell, and brought all his wit to his depiction of those lives. His are novels of their time, best read as social history, and they richly repay rediscovery for the insight they give into their world. It may be that in 100 years historians will turn to celebrity memoirs to learn something about the obsessions of our age. They are unlikely, however, to describe the writers of those memoirs as, in 1847, one newspaper described their originator: "There is no modern novelist whose works excite so much public attention, are so much read, so much talked of, and so much admired as those of Mr Disraeli." Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: the Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives is published by Bloomsbury