Romanticism on the Right: Benjamin Disraeli's Authoritarian Aesthetics

This essay turns an undisciplining lens on Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister of Britain in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. I argue that some of his novels operate within a tradition of deeply conservative aesthetics, celebrating authoritarian models. I focus on Coningsby (1844) and Tancred (1847) to argue that they belong to a long Romanticism, opposing moves toward democracy, reason, and utilitarianism, and espousing values of beauty, passion, and eroticism toward authoritarian ends. Though Disraeli's conservative politics have often been localized as a part of the contest between the Whigs and the Tories, his novels offer a surprising template for a long-lived set of ideas, anticipating more virulent strains of hard-right thought and practice that would arise in the twentieth century.