Sybil, or How to Reconnect the Two Nations by: Benjamin Disraeli
Hardcover. Boston, L.C. Page and Co., reprint, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with spine label, top edge gilt. A volume from Disraeli's collected works, a reprint of the 1845 edition. Two b&w illustrations by Byam Shaw. Sybil is both an upper class romance and a political manifesto set against the backdrop of the Chartist movement (1838-1857). The novel's romantic plot is secondary to the political message, which calls for a restoration of national unity by means of reinstating royal authority and paternalistic government. As its subtitle indicates, Sybil exposes British society's bitter division of the rich and the poor during the "hungry forties." Disraeli portrayed both the physical and moral degradation of working people with gritty realism, relying on accounts from the Blue Books (reports of parliamentary commissions set up to examine social conditions) and his own eyewitness observations of manufacturing towns in the North. Bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
