Laughing with Young Ben: Vivian Grey, Flim-Flams!, and the Perplexities of Satirical Writing

Abstract

From his unpublished juvenilia to The Young Duke (1831), Benjamin Disraeli tested his literary potential mainly through writing in the satirical, comic, or even farcical mode. One way or another, all his fictional works from 1826 to 1830 were meant to make people laugh, or at least smile, and appreciate the young author’s wit and humorous talent for irony and comic exaggeration. He sidelined this practice in the 1830s, when he mainly experimented with other narrative genres and modes of representation, eventually parading in Venetia (1837) a new sobriety of tone such as suited an aspiring Tory politician in the year of Victoria’s accession. Working within this developmental framework, my article sets out to investigate the young Disraeli’s penchant for laughter in connection with the fun-loving vein running in the family. It focuses on Vivian Grey, Part I, and relates it to Flim-Flams!, or, the Life and Errors of My Uncle and the Amours of My Aunt (1805), a quirky satirical ‘romance’ Isaac D’Israeli completed round about the time his eldest son was born. In highlighting the contextual similarities and carnivalesque qualities of the two works, the article offers an eccentric approach to the Romantic/early-Victorian generational changeover.