Benjamin Disraeli Letters. Volume VIII

‘Though his time was not yet, it was not far off’. With these enigmatic words, the current editors of the Disraeli Letters (the last surviving link with the project's original founders) bid adieu to their subject. After twenty-seven years of published output, extending across eight volumes, some 4,000 letters (meticulously located, transcribed and annotated) and a rediscovered co-written novel to boot (A Year at Hartlebury, or The Election [1834]), an introductory prologue informs readers that a ‘revitalized Disraeli Project at Queen's University (Canada)’ will, henceforth, take the edition forward. In one respect, it is disappointing that the current editors were unable to see their subject to ‘the top of the greasy pole’; by any measure of significance, the period after 1865 is immeasurably more important, in the context of Disraeli's life, than the period covered here. It is not surprising, perhaps, that the greatest revelation to come out of this volume is the discovery that Disraeli collaborated with Lionel de Rothschild on the sixteen-page pamphlet, Progress of Jewish Emancipation since 1829 (1848), published in the aftermath of Lord George Bentinck's resignation as leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons over the issue of Jewish Relief and after Rothschild's (technically invalid) election as one of the MPs for the City of London at the 1847 General Election. Both the pamphlet and the four letters establishing Disraeli's active contribution to it are reproduced in their entirety; a further vindication of the project's decision to include new material relating to periods covered in preceding volumes. Indeed, of the 916 letters reproduced in this instalment, some 360 fall outside the parameters of the years 1860 to 1864

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