This is a well-written and seriously researched book that proposes fresh interpretations of significant people and historical and literary events of the early nineteenth century, at the same time it unveils a few literary mysteries, such as the origin, purpose, and effects of Benjamin Disraeli’s first novel: Vivian Grey.

This book tells the story of an early nineteenth-century London newspaper, the Representative, more important for the people who took part in its inception than for its journalistic merits. The gallery of characters who appear in the narrative includes prominent figures of the age, literary as well as political, such as Sir Walter Scott and his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart; Foreign Secretary George Canning; and certainly publisher John Murray II. The pivotal figure is, however, a very young Benjamin Disraeli, whose brilliant mind already displayed great powers of observation, verbal expression and manipulation of his elders and betters. Written in a fluent style, and drawing upon previously untapped original sources at The Bodleian Library and The John Murray Archive at The National Library of Scotland, the book presents documented proof that the events narrated are quite different from what has traditionally been accepted as truth, at the same time it unveils hitherto unknown facets of well-known figures of the age.