Physical description

Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Romance - and - The Rise of Iskander
Author: Benjamin Disraeli (Right Honorable B. Disraeli)
Publisher: Longmans Green & Co., London
Date: 1871 (new edition)
Black cloth hardcover book with embossed gold text on the spine. Inscriptions include stickers, stamps and handwriting.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

Label on spint: " PAT FIC DIS"
Sticker on end paper: "Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library" covered by a sticker, "Corangamite Regional Library Service / Warrnambool City Library / Pattison Collection"
Stamp on flyleaf: "Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library"
Stamp on flypaper: "Corangamite Regional Library Service / Warrnambool City Library"
Handwriting on flypaper: "1022" "REG NO X49" 8302"

Summary

This specific book brings together two distinct works written early in the career of one of Victorian Britain's most fascinating political and literary figures. The subject 1871 volume is Volume VII of the first major "Collected Edition" of Disraeli's novels and tales issued by Longmans, Green & Co.
The first novel, Contarini Fleming, published in 1832, is an intensely autobiographical, romantic and experimental work. It follows the development of a young man, Contarini Fleming, the son of a Scandinavian nobleman and an Italian mother. The story charts his emotional and artistic growth as he struggles with his identity, travels across Europe and the Levant, and attempts to become a poet. It explores the inner consciousness, imagination and the formation of a creative mind which is why Disraeli subtitled it a "Psychological Romance".