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

From his unpublished juvenilia to The Young Duke (1831) the young Benjamin Disraeli tested his literary potential mainly through writing in the satirical, and sometimes comic, or even farcical, mode. He well-nigh relinquished this practice in the 1830s, when he 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. This article sets out to investigate the young Disraeli’s penchant for laughter, in connection with a fun-loving vein running in the family. It focuses on Vivian Grey, part I, and singles out as a term of comparison Flim-flams!, Or, the Life and Errors of My Uncle and His Friends (1805), a quirky satirical work 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, it offers an eccentric approach to the romantic/early-Victorian generational changeover.