A great master of the political novel, Disraeli may be said to have originated the genre. Disraeli's early books were all romans a clef, novels in which he introduced real personages who were easily recognizable beneath fictitious names. With Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847), Disraeli produced his best work. All of them are political novels and more or less comprise a trilogy, since the same characters appear and reappear. In these novels Disraeli dramatized ambition, romantic egoism, and the role of the outsider, particularly the Jew, and revealed a strong sense of the social and economic problems of mid-Victorian Britain. He then gave up writing temporarily, gradually rose to be chancellor of the exchequer, and finally, prime minister from 1867 to 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. During his second term of office, when he was knighted, he took a name from his first novel and became the first Earl of Beaconsfield. In his later years, he resumed his writing and became an intimate friend of Queen Victoria, who referred to his death as "a national calamity.
