Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil

Nils Clausson (University of Regina)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1845

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Genesis and the Political Context

Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845), the second novel in Benjamin Disraeli’s Young England Trilogy, is his most famous work, not least because it launched the phrase “the two nations” which British politicians and pundits still find pertinent. The first occurrence of the phrase was actually in Disraeli’s commonplace book of 1842 but it was not until 1844, after the publication of Coningsby, that he saw its potential as the theme of a polemical novel on what the Victorians termed “the condition-of-England question”. Thomas Carlyle is generally credited with inaugurating debate about the condition-of-England in his pamphlet Chartism in 1839, and contributing to it again in Past and Present (1843). In the same year that Sybil appeared, Friedrich

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3920 words

Citation: Clausson, Nils. "Sybil". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9773, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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