Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli

Starred review from December 1, 2014
Benjamin Disraeli, a struggling novelist, and Mary Anne Lewis, a free-spirited, wealthy widow 15 years his senior, had a deep bond marked by overt romantic displays and shared ambition, even as Disraeli became British prime minister. Through strong scholarship and deft storytelling, Hays (Young Romantics) depicts the occasionally brutal evolution of their marriage and its power shifts: Disraeli was initially reliant on Lewis’s finances, but he slowly asserted his independence during his political ascension—and, in a show of gratitude, eventually gave her the peerage. Their letters to each other and sibling-confidantes reveal not only embarrassing personal struggles for the time—Lewis’s sins included dressing garishly and describing Disraeli in bed at social occasions—but also that Lewis saved them in the face of his ruinous debts. The letters give fascinating insight into imperial England’s upper-class mores and political considerations. Hays’s vivid account offers an empathetic, modern understanding of a passionate, seemingly mismatched couple who inspired each other’s great achievements in the restrained Victorian era—a relationship that remains every bit as absorbing as those in Disraeli’s own romantic novels. Illus. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc.

November 15, 2014
A dual biography of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and Mary Anne Lewis.Before he was Queen Victoria's close friend, Disraeli failed as a lawyer, stock speculator and newspaper proprietor, but even as he found success, he sank into vast debt but found a satisfying, useful relationship. Hay (Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation, 2010) provides insight into the marriage of convenience that became a love story to rival Victoria and Albert's. These two middle-class people succeeded as Mary Anne charmed the voters and Disraeli's intense, clear outlook brought them fame and position. Mary Anne was a sailor's daughter first married to Wyndham Lewis, owner of Welsh ironworks. Also a marriage of convenience, Lewis adored Mary Anne, and she lived happily on his wealth. She secretly supported her brother, paying his debts and buying his military promotions. At the time, Disraeli was always in fear of debtors prison, as his poetry and the romantic silver fork novels he wrote could never pay his debts. Lewis and Mary Anne propelled him into Parliament. He enjoyed Parliamentary privilege as opposed to debtors prison, but his eventual marriage to the widowed and wealthy Mary Anne paid only a fraction of his debt. She never knew how desperate he actually was, and she was deemed vulgar and graceless by the upper classes. However, the queen's favor assured Disraeli a place in society. Hay provides interesting discussions of how Mary Anne's devotion to her brother, and Disraeli's to his sister, created major deceptions in their marriage. Mary Anne's political acumen and her adulation by his constituency got him elected, and his brilliance made him a leader. With this new addition to Disraeli-ana, readers will be enlightened by the younger man and how alike he was to Mary Anne, who became the love of his life.

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January 1, 2015

When Mary Ann Evans Lewis Disraeli died in 1872, the Times of London reported that the private history of her marriage to Benjamin Disraeli, a notable Victorian-era politician, would be "remembered as a beautiful episode in political life." Hay (Young Romantics) aims to re-create that "beautiful episode" in this dual biography, the first monograph to focus extensively on the nature of their union. A sailor's daughter who became a viscountess, Mary Ann Disraeli inspired much curiosity and tongue wagging in her day as a wealthy and rather eccentric widow who was less educated and much older than her husband. Hay's goal is to strip their marriage of mythmaking, and she uses a rich array of archival material to accomplish this end. The result is a painstakingly researched narrative of their lives. Hays is a specialist in literature, thus this account takes a decidedly interdisciplinary bent, with detailed references to the novels of the period and sustained attention to works penned by Disraeli himself. She contends that both "epistolary" and "silver-fork" novels were literary models for their romance. Because Hay chooses to tell the couple's story against the backdrop of such allusions, the political and historical context in which their marriage unfolded is of secondary if not tertiary importance. VERDICT Only for the most serious students of 19th-century British studies.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

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Starred review from February 1, 2015
Hay's remarkable book makes clear and extensively documents the circumstances of Mary Anne Lewis' marriage to British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli and her enduring role in his rise, career, and ultimate victory in politics. Mary Anne, in all her fine oddness and sweetness, bolstered her dear Dizzy with financial and emotional support through times both rough and good, despite the disparity in their ages and abilities. The author begins chapters with a paragraph detailing a contemporaneous woman's situation, with or without a man in her life; these small departures into backdrop are astonishing, often heartbreaking, and are made all the more effective by Hay's straightforward commentary on them as she, too, like one profiled widow, speaks for the legions of silent women marooned by marriage between the social strata of Victorian Britain. Mary Anne was perhaps a lucky one, then, with widowhood leaving her a place to live and a yearly stipend. Mary Anne and Dizzy's was truly, finally, a love affair, though tossed and troubled by lack of money, standing, and familial support and beset by secrets they kept from one another. Hay's thoughtful and measured prose, filled with quotations from letters, missives, and love poems, is a page-turner of a historical, political, and feminist romance. A superlative achievement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)