The novel is a lightweight romantic fantasy. A contemporary reviewer, writing in an 1854 issue of the New Monthly Review, declared that he “liked it least of all Disraeli’s works.”
Lord Byron and Shelley figure in its pages, under different names and different worldly circumstances from those in which they actually lived. We do not consider either portrait well drawn, and that of Shelley especially defective; but still Venetia, like all that Disraeli has written, contains much that is vivid and beautiful, and will be read with interest and delight by every man of taste.[1]
Michael Flavin's Benjamin Disraeli: The Novel as a Political Discourse suggests that Venetia was largely a commercial endeavour for Disraeli, who was deep in debt at the time that he wrote it.
In Byron and the Victorians, Andrew Elfenbein discusses Venetia in terms of Disraeli's presenting himself as "the moral, political and literary successor to Byron, by manipulating the representation of Byron's sexuality", making him straight instead of bisexual and portraying him as having steady but distant male friendships. He says the novel can best be described as "kooky" because of its confused and confusing portrayals of both Byron and Shelley, giving each traits and life circumstances actually possessed by the other.[2]
Footnotes
↑ "Venetia Review". books.google.com from "New Monthly Review. 1837. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
↑ Andrew Elfenbein, Byron and the Victorians. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British prime minister to have been of Jewish origin. He was also a novelist, publishing works of fiction even as prime minister.
John William Polidori was a British writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), the first published modern vampire story. Although the story was at first erroneously credited to Lord Byron, both Byron and Polidori affirmed that the author was Polidori.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.
The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk.
"The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The Vampyre is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The work is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre."
Young England was a Victorian era political group with a political message based on an idealised feudalism: an absolute monarch and a strong Established Church, with the philanthropy of noblesse oblige as the basis for its paternalistic form of social organisation. For the most part, its unofficial membership was confined to a splinter group of Tory aristocrats who had attended public school and university together, among them George Smythe, Lord John Manners, Henry Thomas Hope and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane. The group's leader and figurehead was Benjamin Disraeli, who bore the distinction of having neither an aristocratic background nor an Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge education. Young England promulgated a conservative and romantic species of social Toryism.
Vivian Grey is Benjamin Disraeli's first novel, published by Henry Colburn in 1826. Originally published anonymously, ostensibly by a so-called "man of fashion", part 1 caused a considerable sensation in London society. Contemporary reviewers, suspicious of the numerous solecisms contained within the text, eventually identified the young Disraeli as the author. Disraeli continued the tale in a second volume, also of 1826, and three subsequent volumes in 1827. The form in which Vivian Grey is published now is the revised 1853 edition, which was severely expurgated and, according to critic Wendy Burton, lost much of the charm and freshness of the 1826 edition. The book is a frequent touchstone for discussions of Disraeli's political and literary career.
Venetia may refer to:
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Thomas Medwin was an early 19th-century English writer, poet and translator. He is known chiefly for his biography of his cousin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and for published recollections of his friend, Lord Byron.
Lothair (1870) was a late novel by Benjamin Disraeli, the first he wrote after his first term as Prime Minister. It deals with the comparative merits of the Catholic and Anglican churches as heirs of Judaism, and with the topical question of Italian unification. Though Lothair was a hugely popular work among 19th century readers, it now to some extent lies in the shadow of the same author's Coningsby and Sybil. Lothair reflects anti-Catholicism of the sort that was popular in Britain, and which fueled support for Italian unification ("Risorgimento").
Tancred; or, The New Crusade (1847) is a novel by Benjamin Disraeli, first published by Henry Colburn in three volumes. Together with Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845) it forms a sequence sometimes called the Young England trilogy. It shares a number of characters with the earlier novels, but unlike them is concerned less with the political and social condition of England than with a religious and even mystical theme: the question of how Judaism and Christianity are to be reconciled, and the Church reborn as a progressive force.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction and one of her best-known works. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.
Dodger is a novel written by Terry Pratchett, set in early Victorian London, and inspired by Charles Dickens's character the Artful Dodger. The book was released on 13 September 2012 in the UK.
Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Romance is the fourth and most autobiographical novel written by Benjamin Disraeli, who would later become a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was published anonymously in May 1832 but despite the author considering it his best novel, was a financial failure.
Henrietta Temple is the ninth novel written by Benjamin Disraeli, who would later become a Prime Minister of Britain.
The Rise of Iskander is the seventh novel written by Benjamin Disraeli who would later become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The Infernal Marriage is the eighth novel written by Benjamin Disraeli who would later become Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Ixion in Heaven is the fifth novel written by Benjamin Disraeli who would later become a Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Daisy Hay is Associate Professor in English Literature and Life Writing at the University of Exeter and an author of non-fiction. Hay was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
