The Literary Character Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions: by the Author of Curiosities of Literature""

by Isaac D'Israeli

This is a copy of the original book. In this series, we are bringing old books back into print using our own state-of-the-art techniques. Generally, these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way that the author intended. However, as we are working with old material, so occasionally there may be certain imperfections within the text. We are so pleased to ensure these classics are available again for generations to come.

Genres: Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

386 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2007

About the author

Isaac D'Israeli was a writer and scholar best known for his essays, his associations with other men of letters, and as the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most amusing books of literary criticism I've ever read. It is packed with funny, sad, fascinating, surprising, and all-too-human anecdote about the kinds of lives geniuses lead. D'Israeli was clearly a real eccentric. He wanted to know what "genius" was, so he read up on the lives of as many geniuses as he could, and tried to describe what sort of personalities they have. The result is a unique and strange work of biography.

He has the obvious flaws of a literary critic from the beginning of the nineteenth century. His knowledge of medieval literature is essentially non-existent, and he includes very few women, non-Europeans or lower-class authors in his discussion. But these are easy flaws to look over, because they do not prevent him from having a huge range of examples to draw from, and do not detract from the comic and humane temper of his writing.