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Sybil, or The Two Nations
The social and financial problems of class-ridden Victorian England are depicted vividly and, against this background, the romance of the aristocratic Egremont and Sybil, the daughter of a poor Chartist leader, develops.
537 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1845
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About the author
Benjamin Disraeli
1,062 books189 followersOne of the great British politicians of the nineteenth century, Disraeli served twice as Tory Prime Minister (1868 and 1874 - 1880) and was also a prominent figure in opposition. He is most famous today for the bitter hatred between himself and his political rival William Gladstone. He enjoyed the favour of Queen Victoria, who shared his dislike of Gladstone. His most significant political achievements are the 1867 Reform Act, in which he was instrumental, and the creation of the modern Conservative Party, with which he is credited. His literary career was greatly overshadowed by his parliamentary ambitions ('climbing the greasy pole'), but includes both romances and political novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
February 27, 2009
Disraeli is very much the bête noire of Gladstone's biography, but I thought reading one of his novels would provide more fun and interesting insight than adding yet another unfinished biography to my list.
One of Disraeli's oft-commented upon "qualifications" for office was his ability to flatter Queen Victoria - the rapturous description in here of the Virgin Queen's ascent to the throne amidst tweeting birds is pretty amusing. As literature, Disraeli's novels have been challenged by the test of time - huge undigested chunks of his theories of history alternate with the plot, improbable characters come up conveniently to explain things in long monologues - but also well-written and funny enough of the time.
The Two Nations of the title are the rich and the poor - Sybil herself is one of those impossibly virtuous and graceful Victorian novel heroines. As the daughter of an artisan, her nascent romance with the second son of an aristocratic family would seem to be impossible because of the class divide, but rather than their ultimate union being achieved by the exact democratizing social upheaval which is the ostensible theme of the book, it turns that her family actually *are* of the aristocracy, having been swindled out of their hereditary lands, a deceit that finally comes to light. So the happy ending, such as it is, more reaffirms the existing social order than anything else. This contradiction is, I believe, characteristic of Disraeli's slightly muddled set of beliefs at the time he wrote it and he himself was making his way in politics.
One of Disraeli's oft-commented upon "qualifications" for office was his ability to flatter Queen Victoria - the rapturous description in here of the Virgin Queen's ascent to the throne amidst tweeting birds is pretty amusing. As literature, Disraeli's novels have been challenged by the test of time - huge undigested chunks of his theories of history alternate with the plot, improbable characters come up conveniently to explain things in long monologues - but also well-written and funny enough of the time.
The Two Nations of the title are the rich and the poor - Sybil herself is one of those impossibly virtuous and graceful Victorian novel heroines. As the daughter of an artisan, her nascent romance with the second son of an aristocratic family would seem to be impossible because of the class divide, but rather than their ultimate union being achieved by the exact democratizing social upheaval which is the ostensible theme of the book, it turns that her family actually *are* of the aristocracy, having been swindled out of their hereditary lands, a deceit that finally comes to light. So the happy ending, such as it is, more reaffirms the existing social order than anything else. This contradiction is, I believe, characteristic of Disraeli's slightly muddled set of beliefs at the time he wrote it and he himself was making his way in politics.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 20, 2022
“We live in an age where to be young and to be indifferent can no longer by synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the future are represented by suffering millions; and the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity”.
The closing paragraph written by Disraeli nearly 200 years ago about the People (or the plight of the working classes) is still so relevant to todays society!
Disraeli later became the English prime minister and on doing some research it is great to see that he stuck to his views of “One Nation” and improving the conditions of the working classes.
The book was still a bit of a slog, but the last third was fab.
The closing paragraph written by Disraeli nearly 200 years ago about the People (or the plight of the working classes) is still so relevant to todays society!
Disraeli later became the English prime minister and on doing some research it is great to see that he stuck to his views of “One Nation” and improving the conditions of the working classes.
The book was still a bit of a slog, but the last third was fab.
February 13, 2017
If you don't like politics or satires, this is not the book for you. While I am not very political myself, I like satires very much. This one uses a variation of Romeo and Juliet as a framework: Charles Egremont, newly-elected aristocratic Member of Parliament, meets and falls in love with the beautiful poor Chartist Sybil Gerard. Disraeli used little subtlety in making his point of England being "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; ... THE RICH AND THE POOR." and amidst the humor and the romance, there are strong indictments about a government that allows the terrible conditions of the working classes. The book covers the conditions of farming labourers, mill workers, miners and metalworkers - each suffers in a different way but all suffering.
I particularly liked the satire of the political hostesses & the names Disraeli used for the minor characters (such as Lord Muddlebrains, Lady Firebrace, Colonel Bosky, Mr. Hoaxem etc.). I had a little bit of familiarity with the way aristocratic women sometimes figured as political hostesses before this & so Disraeli's lampooning of them struck me as very funny, such as Lady St. Julian's belief that all that is necessary for the party to secure a Member's vote on some particular issue is to have "asked some of them to dinner, or given a ball or two to their wives and daughters! ... Losing a vote at such a critical time, when if I had had only a remote idea of what was passing through his mind, I would have even asked him to Barrowley for a couple of days."
I particularly liked the satire of the political hostesses & the names Disraeli used for the minor characters (such as Lord Muddlebrains, Lady Firebrace, Colonel Bosky, Mr. Hoaxem etc.). I had a little bit of familiarity with the way aristocratic women sometimes figured as political hostesses before this & so Disraeli's lampooning of them struck me as very funny, such as Lady St. Julian's belief that all that is necessary for the party to secure a Member's vote on some particular issue is to have "asked some of them to dinner, or given a ball or two to their wives and daughters! ... Losing a vote at such a critical time, when if I had had only a remote idea of what was passing through his mind, I would have even asked him to Barrowley for a couple of days."
September 25, 2015
Benjamin Disraeli was a politician. He had Queen Victoria's approval, or perhaps, more accurately, Victoria really disliked Gladstone. In any case, one can either enjoy or disapprove of his politics, but it is difficult to warm up to his abilities as a novelist.
Sybil is first and foremost a political novel; it does offer character, and the fundamentals of a plot, but when you sift out the thin literary bits, you are left with large chunks of politics. It is interesting to see how Disraeli portrays the two nations of the workers and the landed gentry, and one can learn from his discussion. There were indeed those of the upper class who were sympathetic to the concerns of the lower classes, and it is very true that the Industrial Revolution was a social revolution, but Disraeli's novel was very disjointed. Far too often political arguments and comments interfered with the telling and development of a good narrative.
Structureally, we have the rich represented by Charles Egremont, who is the second son, and thus has more freedom to cast his eyes around society and question its structure. For the poor we have Sybil, a beautiful, angelic young woman whose father is Walter Gerard a leader of the poor who are trying to gain more recognition for their plight in society. Naturally, after several plot-like twists they fall in love, Egremont saves Sybil and all this is wrapped up with obvious political overtones from the author.
This novel does perhaps offer some insight on the social upheaval occurring in the 19C but too many shades of party politics tend to dominate the novel. There are other writers of the industrial novel such as Dickens and Gaskell. For fiction read them.
Sybil is first and foremost a political novel; it does offer character, and the fundamentals of a plot, but when you sift out the thin literary bits, you are left with large chunks of politics. It is interesting to see how Disraeli portrays the two nations of the workers and the landed gentry, and one can learn from his discussion. There were indeed those of the upper class who were sympathetic to the concerns of the lower classes, and it is very true that the Industrial Revolution was a social revolution, but Disraeli's novel was very disjointed. Far too often political arguments and comments interfered with the telling and development of a good narrative.
Structureally, we have the rich represented by Charles Egremont, who is the second son, and thus has more freedom to cast his eyes around society and question its structure. For the poor we have Sybil, a beautiful, angelic young woman whose father is Walter Gerard a leader of the poor who are trying to gain more recognition for their plight in society. Naturally, after several plot-like twists they fall in love, Egremont saves Sybil and all this is wrapped up with obvious political overtones from the author.
This novel does perhaps offer some insight on the social upheaval occurring in the 19C but too many shades of party politics tend to dominate the novel. There are other writers of the industrial novel such as Dickens and Gaskell. For fiction read them.
October 6, 2014
Rather well done historical fiction, blending actual events like Chartist riots and Parliamentary intrigues with social commentary about the aristocracy versus the working class, with nicely-done satirical sketches of fictional asshole aristocrats. Where I would fault Disraeli (although no more than a lot of other writers of his era) is on the romance. The heroine, Sybil, is perfect in every way; the heart of an angel, a seraphic singer, beautiful, plus like many a Victorian heroine though she is young and relatively uneducated she speaks with the wisdom and vocabulary of a 55-year-old Oxford don. She is so perfect that her father acknowledges she will most likely have to enter the cloister permanently, because no man is good enough for her.
April 5, 2020
My full review is available on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
Look, I’m all about political reform and uplifting the working classes. I can totally get behind Disraeli’s points about representative democracy and equality. But I must say, when it came to crafting a fictional story to make those points, Disraeli made a real pig’s ear of it. Sybil reads like he sat down with a checklist of everything that should be included in an “industrial novel”, and wrote until he checked off all of them, one by one.
I think I only soaked in about 10% of what Disraeli was pouring out. Sybil is probably better suited to readers who are already deeply familiar with the system of British government and the monarchy, and/or people who have a keen interest and some background knowledge of 18th and 19th century British history. Having an at-best rudimentary understanding of both, this book didn’t do much for me. I appreciated Disraeli’s ideas, but I wasn’t a fan of his execution.
Look, I’m all about political reform and uplifting the working classes. I can totally get behind Disraeli’s points about representative democracy and equality. But I must say, when it came to crafting a fictional story to make those points, Disraeli made a real pig’s ear of it. Sybil reads like he sat down with a checklist of everything that should be included in an “industrial novel”, and wrote until he checked off all of them, one by one.
I think I only soaked in about 10% of what Disraeli was pouring out. Sybil is probably better suited to readers who are already deeply familiar with the system of British government and the monarchy, and/or people who have a keen interest and some background knowledge of 18th and 19th century British history. Having an at-best rudimentary understanding of both, this book didn’t do much for me. I appreciated Disraeli’s ideas, but I wasn’t a fan of his execution.
February 14, 2011
Disraeli definitely had an agenda with this book. Yes, he was very political in his life so why wouldn’t we expect his novels to reflect that? The difficulty with him is the following:
a) He is trying to explain an entire movement in the Victorian period: the struggle for the rights of the working class. To encapsulate this in around 400 pages is extremely difficult to do. Thus, Disraeli introduces A LOT of characters that randomly show up one in every 20 chapters. Confusing? Fuck yes.
b) He has to deal with the structure of traditional story telling v. his hopes for the characters he has created. He thus has to compromise either his beliefs or the believability of his inventions.
c) He was kind of a dick in real life.
That being said I did enjoy this book. Though I think Sybil is a hypocrite and Egremont should have quit being such a weenie, I appreciate what Disraeli attempted to do in writing this novel.
Plus: Lord Marney is so deliciously evil I just want to cackle along with him :)
a) He is trying to explain an entire movement in the Victorian period: the struggle for the rights of the working class. To encapsulate this in around 400 pages is extremely difficult to do. Thus, Disraeli introduces A LOT of characters that randomly show up one in every 20 chapters. Confusing? Fuck yes.
b) He has to deal with the structure of traditional story telling v. his hopes for the characters he has created. He thus has to compromise either his beliefs or the believability of his inventions.
c) He was kind of a dick in real life.
That being said I did enjoy this book. Though I think Sybil is a hypocrite and Egremont should have quit being such a weenie, I appreciate what Disraeli attempted to do in writing this novel.
Plus: Lord Marney is so deliciously evil I just want to cackle along with him :)
November 1, 2012
Taken for what it isn't; for example it isn't a sympathetic account of Chartism; Sybil is not a great book. It tries to champion the idea that if the working classes could only acknowledge their inferiority to the aristocracy then the aristocracy might then reward this act of deference by looking after the great unwashed a little better. This alliance presumably would be "one nation politics". Good luck Ed Milliband!
Taken as a fascinating insight into a developing political mind, or a critique of The Corn Laws, The Poor Law, The New Poor Law Ammendment, a revealing of the living conditions of the industrial and rural poor, the fear of revolution in mid 19th century Britain, the pointing out of some of the reasons why Chartism failed (at the time), as a collection of characters, some of whom work very well indeed (we have early spin doctors in here) as well as the unique novel writing of a major statesman, it is a work that deserves to be widely read.
Mr Disraeli will be heard.
Taken as a fascinating insight into a developing political mind, or a critique of The Corn Laws, The Poor Law, The New Poor Law Ammendment, a revealing of the living conditions of the industrial and rural poor, the fear of revolution in mid 19th century Britain, the pointing out of some of the reasons why Chartism failed (at the time), as a collection of characters, some of whom work very well indeed (we have early spin doctors in here) as well as the unique novel writing of a major statesman, it is a work that deserves to be widely read.
Mr Disraeli will be heard.
Want to read
November 7, 2015Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
July 10, 2019
It’s a funny little novel. Imagine a serving prime minister sitting down to write a novel, and you’d probably conjure up something pretty much like this offering.
Great novelist Disraeli most certainly ain’t. His prose occasionally borders on the insane. It’s not all as clunky and awful as the extract which follows, to be sure. But imagine a piece of writing which includes:
Am I picking on a rare lapse on Disraeli’s part? Well, no. Try this:
The characterisation is shallow in some ways, but revealing in others. The first thing to say is that more or less no one has a character – they’re all just matchstick men and women, two dimensional and forgettable. But it’s interesting that he tends to mock the collectivity of aristocratic characters – they never seem to talk about anything but trivia or politics (and even that, in a carefully trivial way); whereas he tends to treat the collectivity of “The Poor” in a more sympathetic way, the noble savage kind of thing. But by the end he still comes down at the savage end of the spectrum rather than the noble.
The plot is rubbish too. I won’t spoil it for prospective readers with too much detail, but the abrupt, madly histrionic and unexpected ending is a funny old way to round off a serious piece of writing. No, I’m being unfair: the ending is entirely predictable in many ways – you can see it coming from the very first chapters - but his means of getting to that destination is gorgeously over the top.
I could go on.
The funny thing though is that it’s quite an enjoyable read! There’s almost nothing in it that I would want to single out as a truly good example of the art of novel-writing, but somehow it’s quite good fun for a quiet afternoon. For that reason I would give it two and a half stars if such a rating existed, to lift it above the dross I tend to give two stars to. Perhaps one positive quality I would single out then is Disraeli’s unsinkable self-confidence. Not for one second do you doubt that he reckons he can do this writing thing, and strangely, it helps him along. It’s not great literature, but if you feel the need to have read at least one Disraeli novel before the bucket list is complete, then at least this one will not be all that painful!
Great novelist Disraeli most certainly ain’t. His prose occasionally borders on the insane. It’s not all as clunky and awful as the extract which follows, to be sure. But imagine a piece of writing which includes:
“the well-shaped mouth, firm and yet benignant, betokened the celestial soul that habited that gracious frame”.After you’d mastered the wave of nausea, you’d probably start comparing this quality of writing with year one of a school for writers.
Am I picking on a rare lapse on Disraeli’s part? Well, no. Try this:
“Sybil returned his gaze: the deep lustre of her dark orb rested on his peering vision; his eye fled from the unequal contest: his heart throbbed, his limbs trembled: he fell upon his knee”I expect he did, really I do. There are plenty more examples where that came from too. I do hope Disraeli’s offerings as prime minister were more convincing than that.
The characterisation is shallow in some ways, but revealing in others. The first thing to say is that more or less no one has a character – they’re all just matchstick men and women, two dimensional and forgettable. But it’s interesting that he tends to mock the collectivity of aristocratic characters – they never seem to talk about anything but trivia or politics (and even that, in a carefully trivial way); whereas he tends to treat the collectivity of “The Poor” in a more sympathetic way, the noble savage kind of thing. But by the end he still comes down at the savage end of the spectrum rather than the noble.
The plot is rubbish too. I won’t spoil it for prospective readers with too much detail, but the abrupt, madly histrionic and unexpected ending is a funny old way to round off a serious piece of writing. No, I’m being unfair: the ending is entirely predictable in many ways – you can see it coming from the very first chapters - but his means of getting to that destination is gorgeously over the top.
I could go on.
The funny thing though is that it’s quite an enjoyable read! There’s almost nothing in it that I would want to single out as a truly good example of the art of novel-writing, but somehow it’s quite good fun for a quiet afternoon. For that reason I would give it two and a half stars if such a rating existed, to lift it above the dross I tend to give two stars to. Perhaps one positive quality I would single out then is Disraeli’s unsinkable self-confidence. Not for one second do you doubt that he reckons he can do this writing thing, and strangely, it helps him along. It’s not great literature, but if you feel the need to have read at least one Disraeli novel before the bucket list is complete, then at least this one will not be all that painful!
August 1, 2016
Apparently, Disraeli read little fiction himself. This is evident from the appallingly bad plotting and derivative characterization herein. Disraeli awkwardly attempts to mix political treatise (Marx before Marx, as he has a go in favour of THe PEOPLE and Labour against Capitalism [capitals as used with vapid portentiousness in the novel], excoriating the growing disparity between rich and poor) with romance. It doesn't work, for several reasons. One is that there isn't much logical overlap between the plots (such as they are). Another is that it's difficult to make a plausible case for the inherent merit of the working class when the apparent symbolic representative thereof is in fact an aristoctrat who has been robbed of her due--a tired play on the fair unknown, hamhandedly handled. Furthermore, she doesn't even appear until about twenty percent of the way through the book and then has virtually nothing to do for the rest of it except love her father and be the object of an aristocrat's love. He ends up rescuing her from a mob of rioting strikers. So much for the working class. Disraeli seems to want to sympathize with the working class but without the ability to really get beyond the stereotypes of either the salt of the earth English peasant (duly cared for by paternalistic landowners) or the rowdy, violent mob (made so by greedy and parasitic landowners). The characters are at best flat. The action is poorly constructed. Disraeli will, for example, end a chapter on a cliffhanger and then ignore any follow-up to said cliff-hanger subsequently, except in passing. One might see this as daring and innovative. I see it as a failure of novelistic architecture. There are many more nineteenth century novelists to whom one ought to devote one's attention ahead of Disraeli. I would not suggest being in any hurry to read this. Go for Dickens instead. He does Dickensian characters much better than Disraeli does them, for one thing.
February 18, 2016
More like 3.75 stars. A really interesting read and another great Victorian novel. Some of the social commentary is a little heavy-handed and it's not a patch on Gaskell as industrial novels go, but an interesting plot and an enjoyable read :)
March 24, 2015
A unusual "mongrel" of a book with echoes of Dickens, Austen and Hansard. Is it a love story, is it a social commentary or is it a description of the evolution of Parliamentary democracy? It tries to be all three.
July 4, 2022
3.5 stars. An interesting historical fiction novel about the social problems of class in Victorian England. There are good descriptions of the plight of the working class, their lack of opportunities and poor living conditions. Disraeli depicts the appalling conditions of the poor and their exploitation by the new breed of powerful industrialists. In this novel there is a romantic plot involving Charles Egremont and Sybil. Egremont belongs to the landlord class. Sybil is the poor daughter of a militant Chartist leader.
This book was first published in 1845.
This book was first published in 1845.
April 10, 2018
I found this such an interesting read, yet it's also a book that's hard to recommend. It is too long for one thing and the characters are pretty much two dimensional ciphers for the political narrative. But for me, the political narrative was compelling enough so neither of these really mattered.
Disraeli's England has many parallel's to our own times, a country experiencing huge technological innovations, and a hunger and fear (depending on where you are placed on the social strata) of the changes these will bring. You realise the Industrial Revolution has such a huge impact on almost every aspect of every person's life, on the work you would be doing, on where and how you lived, how much things cost, how long you lived. Of course, no story of massive societal change would be complete without a venal and enfeebled elite unable to grapple with the big 'state of the nation' questions.
What I found really interesting is the argument that Disraeli puts forward that life under 'Venetian Capitalism' (which he never really properly defines but broadly speaking seemed to cover industrialisation, international finance, government borrowing and high, perpetual taxation) has meant that the conditions and opportunities for the poor are even worse than under feudalism. He theorises that the working class and old aristocracy are thus natural allies against the avaricious and greedy capitalist class. These are arguments that I've read about in a very detached way but I can't say I ever really properly understood.
So if you like long political fiction and aren't too fussed about characterisations...or plot...then this is for you.
Disraeli's England has many parallel's to our own times, a country experiencing huge technological innovations, and a hunger and fear (depending on where you are placed on the social strata) of the changes these will bring. You realise the Industrial Revolution has such a huge impact on almost every aspect of every person's life, on the work you would be doing, on where and how you lived, how much things cost, how long you lived. Of course, no story of massive societal change would be complete without a venal and enfeebled elite unable to grapple with the big 'state of the nation' questions.
What I found really interesting is the argument that Disraeli puts forward that life under 'Venetian Capitalism' (which he never really properly defines but broadly speaking seemed to cover industrialisation, international finance, government borrowing and high, perpetual taxation) has meant that the conditions and opportunities for the poor are even worse than under feudalism. He theorises that the working class and old aristocracy are thus natural allies against the avaricious and greedy capitalist class. These are arguments that I've read about in a very detached way but I can't say I ever really properly understood.
So if you like long political fiction and aren't too fussed about characterisations...or plot...then this is for you.
December 10, 2017
I can certainly say that I will never re-read this one.
I'm glad I read it; Ouida's politics are shaped to a certain extent by Disraeli, and it's good to see the antecedents of some of her ideas, but this is a total slog.
I find all the political stuff either boring or ridiculous (the people are too violent and dumb to ever lead themselves except for very rare Great Men who also happen to be disenfranchised aristocrats? Really?). As a 21st century gal, I find all the arguments that Disraeli and Carlyle and their ilk put forth about a benevolent aristocracy to be unpersuasive to say the least.
The story part is alright but not very compelling especially since one of the main points is that Sibyl has to learn that all her high ideals about democracy and The People are totally wrong and Egremont, who spends like five minutes in the wild, knows everything about life.
This is a snoozer, my friends.
I'm glad I read it; Ouida's politics are shaped to a certain extent by Disraeli, and it's good to see the antecedents of some of her ideas, but this is a total slog.
I find all the political stuff either boring or ridiculous (the people are too violent and dumb to ever lead themselves except for very rare Great Men who also happen to be disenfranchised aristocrats? Really?). As a 21st century gal, I find all the arguments that Disraeli and Carlyle and their ilk put forth about a benevolent aristocracy to be unpersuasive to say the least.
The story part is alright but not very compelling especially since one of the main points is that Sibyl has to learn that all her high ideals about democracy and The People are totally wrong and Egremont, who spends like five minutes in the wild, knows everything about life.
This is a snoozer, my friends.
September 15, 2017
This has been one of those books I have always felt that I should have read and never actually read...until 2017. What can I say? It was better than I expected, as a novel, and about as I expected as an historical fragment. The details of Parliamentary politics are mostly tedious and the characters rather one dimensional, but the insight into the social threat of Chartism is useful. And, of course, if you have read any of the Anglo-American poverty literature of the period from 1870 to the present, you have basically encountered the central trope of the novel many times over.
October 19, 2025
I'm torn on this book. The first half was quite boring while the second half was very engaging.
Disraeli is essentially attempting to paint a picture of the conditions of the rich and the poor in England during the first of the 19th century. The book is filled with (what was at the time) commentary or satire of contemporary political issues and prominent people. Most of these, naturally, do not pack the same punch as they may once have done. This is also why the first half feels slow. Since Disraeli is trying to establish the basic narrative framework for the rest of the book, the main thing that is supposed to keep the reader engaged is the political satire. Unfortunately, it doesn't really land for me.
The second half has a lot more action, so naturally, it is more engaging to read. Beyond that, Disraelis political message also becomes more poignant as he moves from painting a broad picture of the different social classes to having a narrative focus, creating the space for interesting conflicts between characters and also social classes but not necessarily along class lines.
In short, I think I have to settle on a 3. If I had more knowledge of this period of British history, then some of the satire might have landed better. If that was the case, I could have given it a 4, but as it stands, a 3 is fair.
Disraeli is essentially attempting to paint a picture of the conditions of the rich and the poor in England during the first of the 19th century. The book is filled with (what was at the time) commentary or satire of contemporary political issues and prominent people. Most of these, naturally, do not pack the same punch as they may once have done. This is also why the first half feels slow. Since Disraeli is trying to establish the basic narrative framework for the rest of the book, the main thing that is supposed to keep the reader engaged is the political satire. Unfortunately, it doesn't really land for me.
The second half has a lot more action, so naturally, it is more engaging to read. Beyond that, Disraelis political message also becomes more poignant as he moves from painting a broad picture of the different social classes to having a narrative focus, creating the space for interesting conflicts between characters and also social classes but not necessarily along class lines.
In short, I think I have to settle on a 3. If I had more knowledge of this period of British history, then some of the satire might have landed better. If that was the case, I could have given it a 4, but as it stands, a 3 is fair.
July 4, 2022
This was not historical fiction when it was written. The descriptions of politics seemed contemporary, as in 'you don't want to know how the sausage is made.' The 'love' story was a thin addition, to sell I suppose. Ignore it. People and power have not changed. The conversation could be contemporary.
May 11, 2019
Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil, or the Two Nations. 1845.
A recent rundown of novels by politicians in The Telegraph still has Disraeli at the top of the list. Recent politicians as diverse as Jimmy Carter and Boris Johnson have written novels, but neither, I think, would have the affrontery to say with Disraeli, “When I want a novel, I write one.” Neither Carter nor Johnson have created a political trope like “the two nations” that we will still be using 174 years from now. But the truth is, for readers like me, Disraeli is not competing with the amateur class of politician novelists but with the great novelists of his century, especially Charles Dickens and George Eliot. In that class, I am afraid, he runs a distant third. Sybil is a well-meaning novel with a thesis, hinted at in his subtitle, that the poor have become a separate nation that needs to be reunited with the middle and upper classes. As a back bencher in Parliament, Disraeli was still optimistic that a socially conscious conservative movement could get that done in his lifetime. But once he gained real power, he discovered how intractable the problem was and turned his attention to keeping the Empire together. Sybil, a novel he wrote in his early forties, has neither the wit of Hard Times, Charles Dickens’ novel on the consequences of industrialization, nor the scope and depth of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Sybil is a too-good-to-be-true romantic heroine, and Egremont, the male lead, never quite comes alive. But the novel does do a good job of explaining the rationalizations used by the aristocracy to maintain the status quo that keeps the suffering poor in their place. We hear echoes of those bogus arguments in Congress today, and for that reason alone, Disraeli’s novel is still worth reading.
A recent rundown of novels by politicians in The Telegraph still has Disraeli at the top of the list. Recent politicians as diverse as Jimmy Carter and Boris Johnson have written novels, but neither, I think, would have the affrontery to say with Disraeli, “When I want a novel, I write one.” Neither Carter nor Johnson have created a political trope like “the two nations” that we will still be using 174 years from now. But the truth is, for readers like me, Disraeli is not competing with the amateur class of politician novelists but with the great novelists of his century, especially Charles Dickens and George Eliot. In that class, I am afraid, he runs a distant third. Sybil is a well-meaning novel with a thesis, hinted at in his subtitle, that the poor have become a separate nation that needs to be reunited with the middle and upper classes. As a back bencher in Parliament, Disraeli was still optimistic that a socially conscious conservative movement could get that done in his lifetime. But once he gained real power, he discovered how intractable the problem was and turned his attention to keeping the Empire together. Sybil, a novel he wrote in his early forties, has neither the wit of Hard Times, Charles Dickens’ novel on the consequences of industrialization, nor the scope and depth of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Sybil is a too-good-to-be-true romantic heroine, and Egremont, the male lead, never quite comes alive. But the novel does do a good job of explaining the rationalizations used by the aristocracy to maintain the status quo that keeps the suffering poor in their place. We hear echoes of those bogus arguments in Congress today, and for that reason alone, Disraeli’s novel is still worth reading.
November 2, 2013
I was expecting a political book, and I got one. The writing style might not be the greatest, and there were tendencies to melodrama. But this is a Victorian novel after all. Certainly, events were condensed and time-lines/scenes jumped around a bit, taking me a little time to acclimatise between chapters at first. However, once I understood Disraeli's style of writing, I settled in to the story, events and characters and read with ease.
This is a subject which I really find interesting, but I still learned a lot about events from the book and the end-notes. As a former political scientist, I used to preach about the class divide myself: and despite the workers of today having more than their chains to lose ( why risk the cars, a TV and computer in every room etc - I know; just chains of a different kind) not a lot has changed in terms of the locus of power (although the rift is more visible in the noughties again). I'd recommend this book, but with a warning that it takes a bit of getting into.
This is a subject which I really find interesting, but I still learned a lot about events from the book and the end-notes. As a former political scientist, I used to preach about the class divide myself: and despite the workers of today having more than their chains to lose ( why risk the cars, a TV and computer in every room etc - I know; just chains of a different kind) not a lot has changed in terms of the locus of power (although the rift is more visible in the noughties again). I'd recommend this book, but with a warning that it takes a bit of getting into.
December 24, 2018
I bought this book after I heard about Disraeri and learned that he was a politician and a novelist. I was curious and did not have any specific expectation about it being good or bad.
I was suprised by the tone and the content in a positive way and understood at some point why Disraeli chose to name it Sybil or the two nations.
So much of what happened in the book are relevant today and the notion of the two nations is still in process in the 21 the century.
the distinction between the classes is more and more obvious in our world.
I would recommend this book
I was suprised by the tone and the content in a positive way and understood at some point why Disraeli chose to name it Sybil or the two nations.
So much of what happened in the book are relevant today and the notion of the two nations is still in process in the 21 the century.
the distinction between the classes is more and more obvious in our world.
I would recommend this book
September 9, 2014
I really tried to read this book and I hope one day to finish it but I found it quite difficult. The story was constantly being interrupted by long passages if historical political inferences that were hard to follow and understand. There were so many names and changes in alliances. I gave up but will attempt again one day
March 2, 2015
Epic Book. The symbolism and allegories are awesome. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to learn more about the origin of the English Political System, or the Chartist revolution. Disraeli masterfully portrayed the sufferings of the English poor in early Victorian England while juxtaposing it with the frivolities of the privileged class. Again, definitely a good read.
January 15, 2017
Very well written book. It was a pleasure reading it.
December 24, 2025
I am rarely inclined to prioritise personal enjoyment over literary ambition. Yet Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil makes a compelling case for doing so. For all its historical importance and political discourse, this is a novel that left me impatient for its conclusion, and frustrated when that conclusion offered no sense of reward.
Sybil is, above all, a political novel. More than a roman de thèse in Wildean style, Disraeli sought to invent something grander: a form through which political ideology could be rendered intelligible to the public. The novel is a vehicle for his diagnosis of Victorian Britain as “two nations”— rich and poor, divided by class, opportunity, and power — and for his vision of paternalistic reform. In this respect, Sybil is innovative. It is no accident that its author would later become Prime Minister.
Yet that ambition comes at a steep cost for the modern reader. Disraeli’s political discourse is dense, detailed, and specific. The novel assumes an intimate familiarity with mid-19th-century British politics: the Whigs, Tories, early Conservatives, the Young England movement, Chartism, and nascent labour agitation under industrial capitalism. Parliamentary debates unfold at length; obscure MPs and long-forgotten peers drift in and out of the narrative. Without substantial external research, these passages read less like social realism than like dispatches from a foreign world.
This burden of contextual knowledge weighs heavily on the novel’s readability. Political philosophy saturates Sybil — necessarily so, given Disraeli’s reformist aims — but it overwhelms the narrative. What might have felt urgent and polemical to a Victorian audience now feels dense and impenetrable. The novel’s arguments demand not just attention but historical fluency.
Structurally, Sybil suffers from similar excess. The cast is vast, and Disraeli struggles to maintain narrative focus. Although Sybil Gerard and Charles Egremont are nominally the protagonists, they are repeatedly displaced by excursions into both aristocratic salons and industrial slums, all serving Disraeli’s sociopolitical schema. Individual characters blur into representative types — mechanisms of ideology rather than fully realised figures. The result is a novel that feels dispersed, its connection perpetually deferred.
The central romance between Sybil and Egremont should provide narrative cohesion, yet it is frequently sidelined by prolonged parliamentary scenes and ideological exposition. The story oscillates between fiction and political tract, never fully committing to either, struggling to blend and focus on both. When the narrative momentum begins to gather, it is abruptly interrupted by debates that feel redundant, sapping the novel of dramatic tension and consequentially the reader’s attention.
None of this is to deny Disraeli’s achievement. Sybil is a landmark work in the development of the political novel, and its influence is undeniable. It articulates, with clarity and conviction, a vision of social responsibility that would shape British conservatism for decades. But innovation does not always age gracefully. Read today, Sybil feels more like a historical document than a living work of fiction.
For a contemporary reader without specialist knowledge— or even for one with a passing familiarity with Victorian politics — the experience can be alienating. The novel demands intellectual labour without offering commensurate narrative pleasure. I found myself rarely certain of what was happening, or why I should care.
Verdict: Sybil is an important novel, but not an engaging one. As a political intervention, it is bold and historically significant; as a work of fiction, it is diffuse, overburdened, and difficult to inhabit. Admirable in intention, but taxing and unrewarding to read today.
Sybil is, above all, a political novel. More than a roman de thèse in Wildean style, Disraeli sought to invent something grander: a form through which political ideology could be rendered intelligible to the public. The novel is a vehicle for his diagnosis of Victorian Britain as “two nations”— rich and poor, divided by class, opportunity, and power — and for his vision of paternalistic reform. In this respect, Sybil is innovative. It is no accident that its author would later become Prime Minister.
Yet that ambition comes at a steep cost for the modern reader. Disraeli’s political discourse is dense, detailed, and specific. The novel assumes an intimate familiarity with mid-19th-century British politics: the Whigs, Tories, early Conservatives, the Young England movement, Chartism, and nascent labour agitation under industrial capitalism. Parliamentary debates unfold at length; obscure MPs and long-forgotten peers drift in and out of the narrative. Without substantial external research, these passages read less like social realism than like dispatches from a foreign world.
This burden of contextual knowledge weighs heavily on the novel’s readability. Political philosophy saturates Sybil — necessarily so, given Disraeli’s reformist aims — but it overwhelms the narrative. What might have felt urgent and polemical to a Victorian audience now feels dense and impenetrable. The novel’s arguments demand not just attention but historical fluency.
Structurally, Sybil suffers from similar excess. The cast is vast, and Disraeli struggles to maintain narrative focus. Although Sybil Gerard and Charles Egremont are nominally the protagonists, they are repeatedly displaced by excursions into both aristocratic salons and industrial slums, all serving Disraeli’s sociopolitical schema. Individual characters blur into representative types — mechanisms of ideology rather than fully realised figures. The result is a novel that feels dispersed, its connection perpetually deferred.
The central romance between Sybil and Egremont should provide narrative cohesion, yet it is frequently sidelined by prolonged parliamentary scenes and ideological exposition. The story oscillates between fiction and political tract, never fully committing to either, struggling to blend and focus on both. When the narrative momentum begins to gather, it is abruptly interrupted by debates that feel redundant, sapping the novel of dramatic tension and consequentially the reader’s attention.
None of this is to deny Disraeli’s achievement. Sybil is a landmark work in the development of the political novel, and its influence is undeniable. It articulates, with clarity and conviction, a vision of social responsibility that would shape British conservatism for decades. But innovation does not always age gracefully. Read today, Sybil feels more like a historical document than a living work of fiction.
For a contemporary reader without specialist knowledge— or even for one with a passing familiarity with Victorian politics — the experience can be alienating. The novel demands intellectual labour without offering commensurate narrative pleasure. I found myself rarely certain of what was happening, or why I should care.
Verdict: Sybil is an important novel, but not an engaging one. As a political intervention, it is bold and historically significant; as a work of fiction, it is diffuse, overburdened, and difficult to inhabit. Admirable in intention, but taxing and unrewarding to read today.
December 17, 2022
Benjamin Disraeli was clearly a man of many talents. He was British Prime Minister twice, a Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Leader of the House of Commons. He was also friendly with Queen Victoria who elevated him to Lord Beaconsfield. He was also a novelist, writing Sybil, subtitled The Two Nations in 1842, some five years after his entrance into Parliament.
Title and subtitle are important here, The Sybil of the title is the daughter of Walter Gerard, who is involved with the Chartists and is therefore associated with the developing trade union movement. We first meet Sybil entering a convent, donning a veil that she will later renounce. Disraeli casts her as an archetypal, perhaps clichéd young Victorian woman. She is demure, attractive without ever being coquettish, clearly desirable without ever wanting to exploit the quality and pursued by various suitors, none of which she ever tries to manipulate. For a modern reader, she is about as credible as Disraeli’s credentials for claiming he is a novelist.
But Sybil is well written and reads easily. The author is determinedly less verbose than a modern reader might expect, though there remain many occasions where the expression is both convoluted and clumsy to modern eyes, though perhaps less so than other, more famous writers of the era.
What is clear from the start is that Benjamin Disraeli found it hard to leave the day job behind. Sybil is a thoroughly political novel. It deals with the turmoil, social, political and economic, that surrounded the rise and fall of Chartism, that mid nineteenth century popular plea for reform. In 1842 there was social unrest, organising by labour and arrests of the ringleaders. This is the territory that Sybil the novel inhabits. Throughout the book, events seem to pass by the heroine, if indeed that is what she is, almost as if they are presented so that she can witness them and then not react. In vain, she tries to influence her father not to become part of the movement. She thus becomes everything one would expect from a woman at the time, meek, mild, concerned, covered, caring, asexual, even aloof.
Disraeli, despite calling the book a novel, clearly found it hard to leave the day job behind. In places, this sounds like a handbook of parliamentary procedure, at other times like a Conservative party manifesto. And its positions, befitting the founder of the modern Conservative Party, often sound remarkably up to date. In what might sound like Edward Heath’s “unacceptable face of capitalism” over a century later, Disraeli describes a capitalist, with pockets bulging with opium profits and at the same time mouthing a constant, self-interested desire for “free trade”.
It was Margaret Thatcher who denied that there was anything called society, only individual men and women who look after themselves before anything else. Disraeli has a character say, “As for community,” said a voice which proceeded neither from Egremont nor the stranger, “with the monasteries expired the only type that we ever had in England of such an intercourse. There is no community in England; there is aggregation, but aggregation under circumstances which make it rather a dissociating, than an uniting, principle.”
But one thing that Disraeli repeatedly visits is the disparity between the wealth of the gentry and the capitalists compared to the poverty and drudgery of the working classes. He makes many references, often sympathetic ones, to the plight of the labouring classes, passages that sound like the rhetoric of Boris Johnson’s “levelling up”.
Disraeli describes a town thus: “It is their condition everywhere; but in cities that condition is aggravated. A density of population implies a severer struggle for existence, and a consequent repulsion of elements brought into too close contact. In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.” Despite the hints of compassion, these sentiments sound a lot like the distinction between a deserving and an undeserving poor.
Lord Marney, the local gentry, muses with Malthus in mind on how the labouring classes might better themselves: “The people do not want employment; it is the greatest mistake in the world; all this employment is a stimulus to population.” And, unfortunately, there is no way of avoiding the prejudices of the age here. “Why—my father was a gentleman—", said Egremont in a hesitating tone, “and I was a younger son.” “Ah!” said Gerard, “that is as bad as being a woman”, though it has to be said that Disraeli does suggest that his own views may indeed mock such positions.
In Book 4, there is a description of an initiation rite. It is clearly based on Masonic ritual. Disraeli, however, calls it an adoption into trade union, thus accusing the union of deliberately restricting freedom and general rights. One would expect this from a Tory, after all, even today.
When questioned on how free trade might be sold to an electorate more worried about protecting their own agriculture and meat industry, Disraeli offers a fictitious quote from Downing Street which sounds remarkably modern, even sources from Yes, Minister. “Well you know what to say,” said the gentleman in Downing Street. “Tell them generally that they are quite mistaken; prove to them particularly that my only object has been to render protection more protective, by making it practical and divesting it of the surplusage of odium; that no foreign corn can come in at fifty-five shillings; that there are not enough cattle in all Holstein to supply the parish of Pancras daily with beef-steaks; and that as for the income tax, they will be amply compensated for it by their diminished cost of living through the agency of that very tariff of which they are so superficially complaining.” It’s all got to be good for you, even if you know it isn’t. He goes on to have the same insider advice “Conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others”, which seems to sum up how current political leaders deliver their positions via mass media.
Thus Sybil, The Two Nations, makes a case for one nation Toryism. But underpinning the book’s entire structure is a concentration on what the gentry and the capitalist class will tolerate, not what the labouring classes want. Yes, Sybil is worth reading, but probably not as a mere novel.
Title and subtitle are important here, The Sybil of the title is the daughter of Walter Gerard, who is involved with the Chartists and is therefore associated with the developing trade union movement. We first meet Sybil entering a convent, donning a veil that she will later renounce. Disraeli casts her as an archetypal, perhaps clichéd young Victorian woman. She is demure, attractive without ever being coquettish, clearly desirable without ever wanting to exploit the quality and pursued by various suitors, none of which she ever tries to manipulate. For a modern reader, she is about as credible as Disraeli’s credentials for claiming he is a novelist.
But Sybil is well written and reads easily. The author is determinedly less verbose than a modern reader might expect, though there remain many occasions where the expression is both convoluted and clumsy to modern eyes, though perhaps less so than other, more famous writers of the era.
What is clear from the start is that Benjamin Disraeli found it hard to leave the day job behind. Sybil is a thoroughly political novel. It deals with the turmoil, social, political and economic, that surrounded the rise and fall of Chartism, that mid nineteenth century popular plea for reform. In 1842 there was social unrest, organising by labour and arrests of the ringleaders. This is the territory that Sybil the novel inhabits. Throughout the book, events seem to pass by the heroine, if indeed that is what she is, almost as if they are presented so that she can witness them and then not react. In vain, she tries to influence her father not to become part of the movement. She thus becomes everything one would expect from a woman at the time, meek, mild, concerned, covered, caring, asexual, even aloof.
Disraeli, despite calling the book a novel, clearly found it hard to leave the day job behind. In places, this sounds like a handbook of parliamentary procedure, at other times like a Conservative party manifesto. And its positions, befitting the founder of the modern Conservative Party, often sound remarkably up to date. In what might sound like Edward Heath’s “unacceptable face of capitalism” over a century later, Disraeli describes a capitalist, with pockets bulging with opium profits and at the same time mouthing a constant, self-interested desire for “free trade”.
It was Margaret Thatcher who denied that there was anything called society, only individual men and women who look after themselves before anything else. Disraeli has a character say, “As for community,” said a voice which proceeded neither from Egremont nor the stranger, “with the monasteries expired the only type that we ever had in England of such an intercourse. There is no community in England; there is aggregation, but aggregation under circumstances which make it rather a dissociating, than an uniting, principle.”
But one thing that Disraeli repeatedly visits is the disparity between the wealth of the gentry and the capitalists compared to the poverty and drudgery of the working classes. He makes many references, often sympathetic ones, to the plight of the labouring classes, passages that sound like the rhetoric of Boris Johnson’s “levelling up”.
Disraeli describes a town thus: “It is their condition everywhere; but in cities that condition is aggravated. A density of population implies a severer struggle for existence, and a consequent repulsion of elements brought into too close contact. In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.” Despite the hints of compassion, these sentiments sound a lot like the distinction between a deserving and an undeserving poor.
Lord Marney, the local gentry, muses with Malthus in mind on how the labouring classes might better themselves: “The people do not want employment; it is the greatest mistake in the world; all this employment is a stimulus to population.” And, unfortunately, there is no way of avoiding the prejudices of the age here. “Why—my father was a gentleman—", said Egremont in a hesitating tone, “and I was a younger son.” “Ah!” said Gerard, “that is as bad as being a woman”, though it has to be said that Disraeli does suggest that his own views may indeed mock such positions.
In Book 4, there is a description of an initiation rite. It is clearly based on Masonic ritual. Disraeli, however, calls it an adoption into trade union, thus accusing the union of deliberately restricting freedom and general rights. One would expect this from a Tory, after all, even today.
When questioned on how free trade might be sold to an electorate more worried about protecting their own agriculture and meat industry, Disraeli offers a fictitious quote from Downing Street which sounds remarkably modern, even sources from Yes, Minister. “Well you know what to say,” said the gentleman in Downing Street. “Tell them generally that they are quite mistaken; prove to them particularly that my only object has been to render protection more protective, by making it practical and divesting it of the surplusage of odium; that no foreign corn can come in at fifty-five shillings; that there are not enough cattle in all Holstein to supply the parish of Pancras daily with beef-steaks; and that as for the income tax, they will be amply compensated for it by their diminished cost of living through the agency of that very tariff of which they are so superficially complaining.” It’s all got to be good for you, even if you know it isn’t. He goes on to have the same insider advice “Conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others”, which seems to sum up how current political leaders deliver their positions via mass media.
Thus Sybil, The Two Nations, makes a case for one nation Toryism. But underpinning the book’s entire structure is a concentration on what the gentry and the capitalist class will tolerate, not what the labouring classes want. Yes, Sybil is worth reading, but probably not as a mere novel.
June 15, 2021
As a literary work, this book is a poor novel. The characters are at best archetypes and at worst caricatures, while the plot is both obvious and simplistic, and the style is sometimes arch and often overwritten, with dialogue, particularly that of the north country, working class characters, that is unrealistic and often incongruous. Benjamin Disraeli was a talented writer, and his earlier political novel, 'Coningsby', a precursor of Trollope, is enjoyable and well composed, being infused with a heightened sense of irony and a gift for comedy. However, 'Sybil', his 'condition of England' novel is markedly inferior, being excessively mawkish and sentimental in a sub-Dickensian manner (it is even more sugary and bathetic than 'The Old Curiosity Shop'), but lacking Dickens' high narrative ability and acute characterisation, and with a banal story contrived to suit the author's socio-political objectives rather than the truths of great literature.
And yet, 'Sybil' is an important work, one, because of its contemporary success, which tells us much about the reading habits of the mid-Victorian public, and, two, what it reveals about Disraeli's political thinking and his Toryism. The ever indebted Disraeli, who needed to write a popular bestseller and therefore tempered the sharper satire and light comedy of 'Coningsby' in favour of a more publicly pleasing, overtly sentimental novel, here deals with the major social and political questions of the day, namely the Chartist movement and social deprivation, especially in northern industrial towns (although, curiously, he has little to say about the Corn Laws, the political issue de jour, and the campaign against the repeal of which catapulted him into the front line of politics, but, his dismissive tone with regards to Robert Peel, as in his earlier novel, is apparent throughout - Peel remained unforgiven for not recognising the author's genius with the offer of ministerial office even before their fracture over Corn Law Repeal).
What Disraeli attempts to do is resurrect a bucolic vision of an England of class and social peace, which seeks a modus vivendi between the extremes of reactionary aristocracy and exploitative capital and violent political protest and revolutionary labour, and sees in a benevolent, paternalist Toryism a way forward, although one which clearly rejects mass democracy, while decrying what he calls the Venetian constitutionalism of Whig oligarchy and the jobbery of Conservative trimming - for a Tory MP, Disraeli is cutting about the careerism of his own party and what he regards as Peel's adulteration of a prelapsarian, royalist, and landed Toryism, seemingly founded upon reverence for the memory of the heroically misunderstood Charles the Martyr. And he gives short shrift to Chartism, denying the need for or validity of mass democracy and working class political representation, and regarding the Charter as a Trojan Horse for revolution and social violence. However, interestingly and somewhat perversely, Disraeli rather rejects the Anglicanism of the traditional Tory Party in preference for a Gothic revivalist English Catholicism, symbolised by his proto-nun heroine and the ruined abbey in which his aristocratic protagonist first meets her. If nothing else throughout his long career, Disraeli remained both a maverick and esoteric in his understanding of England and its past.
Of course, Disraeli's vision is nonsense, and his own career was to prove it so, as Britain further embraced industrialisation and urbanisation, while the 'Merrie England' (sic) of the countryside went into relative decline, demographically and economically. Indeed, Disraeli himself realised the weaknesses of his vision of paternalism and denial of working class political agency, when he introduced the 1867 Reform Act, paving the way for participatory democracy, while his great Second Ministry was responsible for important social and local government reforms that further entrenched responsibility for the 'condition of the people' in the state and its agencies rather than the traditional leaders of provincial, landed and commercial society in whom he places his hopes here. As a minister, he realised the impracticalities of the 'Bournevillism' that 'Sybil' posits as a solution to the 'Condition of England' problems of industry and industrial relations, and he did not seek in office to make of his wistful and fictional image an unobtainable reality.
'Sybil' is very much a book of myths, of an England that never was and never will be, and one torn asunder by class differences that separate the people into two opposing nations that can only be bridged by a coalition of a compassionate landed society and a responsible, patient, and quiescent working class in a land of moderation governed by propertied philosopher kings such as the author and his noble and parliamentary associates. In a sense, although their equally impractical solutions are opposed, Disraeli in this novel diagnoses the same social evils as Marx, although with the categorical difference that the former was intending to avoid the very revolution the latter hoped to ferment. In the end both were wrong, but only because politicians in both Conservative and Liberal Parties, and later the anti-revolutonary, non-Marxist Labour Party, through administrative, political, and social reforms genuinely sought to better the 'condition of the people' and increase political participation, and so alleviated misery sufficiently to avoid class violence in Great Britain while providing means and fora for protest and dissent, although Ireland has another story, which rather proves the rule.
This book is a testament to Disraeli's idiosyncratic vision and romanticism and of value in understanding the great politician's mind at mid-century as the spokesman of 'Young England', passionate, earnest, sentimental, and naive, but it also provides proof that, fortunately, Benjamin Disraeli was to reveal himself a far greater and wiser statesman than he was a sentimental Victorian novelist.
And yet, 'Sybil' is an important work, one, because of its contemporary success, which tells us much about the reading habits of the mid-Victorian public, and, two, what it reveals about Disraeli's political thinking and his Toryism. The ever indebted Disraeli, who needed to write a popular bestseller and therefore tempered the sharper satire and light comedy of 'Coningsby' in favour of a more publicly pleasing, overtly sentimental novel, here deals with the major social and political questions of the day, namely the Chartist movement and social deprivation, especially in northern industrial towns (although, curiously, he has little to say about the Corn Laws, the political issue de jour, and the campaign against the repeal of which catapulted him into the front line of politics, but, his dismissive tone with regards to Robert Peel, as in his earlier novel, is apparent throughout - Peel remained unforgiven for not recognising the author's genius with the offer of ministerial office even before their fracture over Corn Law Repeal).
What Disraeli attempts to do is resurrect a bucolic vision of an England of class and social peace, which seeks a modus vivendi between the extremes of reactionary aristocracy and exploitative capital and violent political protest and revolutionary labour, and sees in a benevolent, paternalist Toryism a way forward, although one which clearly rejects mass democracy, while decrying what he calls the Venetian constitutionalism of Whig oligarchy and the jobbery of Conservative trimming - for a Tory MP, Disraeli is cutting about the careerism of his own party and what he regards as Peel's adulteration of a prelapsarian, royalist, and landed Toryism, seemingly founded upon reverence for the memory of the heroically misunderstood Charles the Martyr. And he gives short shrift to Chartism, denying the need for or validity of mass democracy and working class political representation, and regarding the Charter as a Trojan Horse for revolution and social violence. However, interestingly and somewhat perversely, Disraeli rather rejects the Anglicanism of the traditional Tory Party in preference for a Gothic revivalist English Catholicism, symbolised by his proto-nun heroine and the ruined abbey in which his aristocratic protagonist first meets her. If nothing else throughout his long career, Disraeli remained both a maverick and esoteric in his understanding of England and its past.
Of course, Disraeli's vision is nonsense, and his own career was to prove it so, as Britain further embraced industrialisation and urbanisation, while the 'Merrie England' (sic) of the countryside went into relative decline, demographically and economically. Indeed, Disraeli himself realised the weaknesses of his vision of paternalism and denial of working class political agency, when he introduced the 1867 Reform Act, paving the way for participatory democracy, while his great Second Ministry was responsible for important social and local government reforms that further entrenched responsibility for the 'condition of the people' in the state and its agencies rather than the traditional leaders of provincial, landed and commercial society in whom he places his hopes here. As a minister, he realised the impracticalities of the 'Bournevillism' that 'Sybil' posits as a solution to the 'Condition of England' problems of industry and industrial relations, and he did not seek in office to make of his wistful and fictional image an unobtainable reality.
'Sybil' is very much a book of myths, of an England that never was and never will be, and one torn asunder by class differences that separate the people into two opposing nations that can only be bridged by a coalition of a compassionate landed society and a responsible, patient, and quiescent working class in a land of moderation governed by propertied philosopher kings such as the author and his noble and parliamentary associates. In a sense, although their equally impractical solutions are opposed, Disraeli in this novel diagnoses the same social evils as Marx, although with the categorical difference that the former was intending to avoid the very revolution the latter hoped to ferment. In the end both were wrong, but only because politicians in both Conservative and Liberal Parties, and later the anti-revolutonary, non-Marxist Labour Party, through administrative, political, and social reforms genuinely sought to better the 'condition of the people' and increase political participation, and so alleviated misery sufficiently to avoid class violence in Great Britain while providing means and fora for protest and dissent, although Ireland has another story, which rather proves the rule.
This book is a testament to Disraeli's idiosyncratic vision and romanticism and of value in understanding the great politician's mind at mid-century as the spokesman of 'Young England', passionate, earnest, sentimental, and naive, but it also provides proof that, fortunately, Benjamin Disraeli was to reveal himself a far greater and wiser statesman than he was a sentimental Victorian novelist.
October 14, 2018
A great Victorian novel
Disraeli was an important politician and an incomparable orator. I knew that he was also a novelist, but did not realise his ability. Sybil is not uniformly good, but the best passages hold there own with Dickens and his contemporaries. I also failed to realise that Disraeli was obsessed with the victims of the Industrial Revolution. On a lighter level, his descriptions of parliamentarians has continued relevance today! I am tempted to read some of his other mature novels.
Disraeli was an important politician and an incomparable orator. I knew that he was also a novelist, but did not realise his ability. Sybil is not uniformly good, but the best passages hold there own with Dickens and his contemporaries. I also failed to realise that Disraeli was obsessed with the victims of the Industrial Revolution. On a lighter level, his descriptions of parliamentarians has continued relevance today! I am tempted to read some of his other mature novels.
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