Book: The Literary Character, or the History of Men of Genius

Overview

Isaac Disraeli's The Literary Character, or the History of Men of Genius (1818) offers a panoramic meditation on writers and the nature of genius. Presented as a revised and expanded edition of an earlier essay, the volume moves between sharp critical portraiture and anecdotal biography, tracing how temperament, manners, and circumstance shape creative life. Disraeli treats literary fame as a human drama, where character and talent interact with society, fortune, and historical moment.
The book addresses a wide range of figures from antiquity through the modern era, pairing learned allusion with lively storytelling. Rather than offering exhaustive scholarship, Disraeli favors impressionistic sketches that aim to reveal moral character as much as literary achievement, producing portraits meant to instruct and entertain in equal measure.

Structure and Content

A short introductory essay lays out Disraeli's conception of the "literary character, " defining genius by its habits, eccentricities, and social effects. The remainder of the volume is composed of individual sketches and anecdotes about notable writers, each piece eclectic in length and tone. The sketches frequently combine biographical fact, criticism of key works, and memorable stories that dramatize the temperament of their subjects.
Arrangement is broadly chronological and topical; ancient, medieval, and modern figures are set side by side to suggest continuities and contrasts in the life of letters. The portraits are rarely dry recitations of dates and publications, and instead emphasize habits of mind, rhetorical gifts, personal peculiarities, and the interplay between private conduct and public reputation.

Themes and Approach

A central theme is the tension between genius and manners: the idea that original talent often comes paired with social awkwardness, vice, or unconventionality. Disraeli explores how national character, historical circumstances, and personal morality inform aesthetic production, proposing that taste and temperament are inseparable. He reflects on influence and originality, admiring bold departures from received canons while warning against affectation and artifice.
Philosophical and moral reflections recur alongside anecdote. Disraeli is interested in how literary distinction is won and sustained, how reputation is made or unmade, and how critics and readers participate in the process. The portraits often read as ethical studies as much as aesthetic ones, with evaluation grounded in both judgment and sympathy.

Style and Tone

The prose is epigrammatic, ornate, and at times rhetorical, blending classical learning with the sensibilities of early 19th-century taste. Brief maxims, pointed comparisons, and lively digressions give the sketches an entertaining momentum. Anecdote is a favored device: a single telling story frequently stands in for a fuller psychological portrait.
Disraeli's voice alternates between genial appreciation and acid critique; he admires bold originality while retaining a moralist's concern for decorum and judgment. The result is a readable, often witty series of miniatures rather than a strictly systematic critical history.

Legacy and Reception

The Literary Character helped consolidate Disraeli's reputation as a perceptive popular critic and biographer, contributing to the broader early 19th-century appetite for literary portraiture. Its vivid sketches influenced how readers imagined famous writers and helped popularize a more human, anecdotal mode of literary history. While later scholarship may find its judgments impressionistic, the volume remains valued for its lively judgments, memorable phrases, and historical sense of how genius is embedded in character and circumstance.