Editing Benjamin Disraeli (section)

===1820s===
In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was [[Articled clerk|articled]] as a clerk to a firm of [[solicitor]]s—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the [[City of London]].<ref name=d8>Davis, pp. 8–9</ref> T F Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and a friend of his father, but also his prospective father-in-law: Isaac and Maples considered that the latter's only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin.<ref>Blake (1967), p. 18; and Bradford, p. 11</ref> A friendship developed, but there was no romance. The firm had a large and profitable business, and as the biographer R W Davis observes, the clerkship was "the kind of secure, respectable position that many fathers dream of for their children".<ref name=d8/> Although biographers including [[Robert Blake, Baron Blake|Robert Blake]] and Bradford comment that such a post was incompatible with Disraeli's romantic and ambitious nature, he reportedly gave his employers satisfactory service, and later professed to have learned much there.<ref>Blake (1967), pp. 18–19; and Bradford, p. 11</ref> He recalled: <blockquote>I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament. My father's refrain always was '[[Philip Carteret Webb]]', who was the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an MP. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I have often thought, though I have often regretted the University, that it was much the reverse.<ref>Monypenny and Buckle, p. 31</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Francis Grant (1803-1878) - Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), Earl of Beaconsfield, PC, FRS, KG, as a Young Man - 428984 - National Trust.jpg|thumb|left|upright|''[[Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (Grant)|Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli]]'' by [[Francis Grant (artist)|Francis Grant]]. Disraeli as a young man—a retrospective portrayal painted in 1852|alt=A young man of vaguely Semitic appearance, with long and curly black hair]]
The year after joining Maples' firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli. His reasons are unknown, but the biographer Bernard Glassman surmises that it was to avoid being confused with his father.<ref name=g100>Glassman, p. 100</ref> Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new version of the name; Isaac and his wife retained the older form.<ref name=g100/>{{refn|Some people, notably Disraeli's opponents, continued to include the apostrophe when writing his name. [[Henry Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne|Lord Lincoln]] referred to "D'Israeli" in a letter to [[Sir Robert Peel]] in 1846.<ref>Conacher, J B. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/557179 "Peel and the Peelites, 1846–1850"], ''The English Historical Review'', July 1958, p. 435 {{subscription}}</ref> Peel followed suit.<ref>Gash, p. 387.</ref> ''The Times'' took several years before it dropped the apostrophe and used Disraeli's spelling.<ref>"General Election", ''The Times'', 3 July 1832, p. 3; "General Election", ''The Times'', 13 December 1832, p. 3; "Mr. D'Israeli and Mr. O'Connell", ''The Times'', 6 May 1835, p. 3; "The Conservatives of Buckinghamshire", ''The Times'', 17 October 1837, p. 3; "Election Committees", ''The Times'' 5 June 1838, p. 3</ref> Even in the 1870s, towards the end of Disraeli's career, the practice continued.<ref>Wohl, Anthony. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/175985 "Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi": Disraeli as Alien"], ''The Journal of British Studies'', July 1995, p. 381, ff 22 {{subscription}}</ref>|group= n}}

Disraeli toured Belgium and the [[Rhine|Rhine Valley]] with his father in the summer of 1824. He later wrote that while travelling on the [[Rhine]] he decided to abandon his position: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer."<ref>Blake (1967), p. 22</ref> On their return to England he left the solicitors, at the suggestion of Maples, with the aim of qualifying as a [[barrister]]. He enrolled as a student at [[Lincoln's Inn]] and joined the [[barrister's chambers|chambers]] of his uncle, Nathaniel Basevy, and then those of Benjamin Austen, who persuaded Isaac that Disraeli would never make a barrister and should be allowed to pursue a literary career.<ref>Bradford, p. 12</ref> He had made a tentative start: in May 1824 he submitted a manuscript to his father's friend, the publisher [[John Murray (1778–1843)|John Murray]], but withdrew it before Murray could decide whether to publish it.<ref>Disraeli (1982), p. 9</ref>

Released from the law, Disraeli did some work for Murray, but turned most of his attention to speculative dealing on the [[stock exchange]].<ref>Blake (1967), p. 25</ref> There was at the time a boom in shares in South American mining companies. Spain was losing its South American colonies in the face of rebellions. At the urging of [[George Canning]] the British government recognised the new independent governments of Argentina (1824), Colombia and Mexico (both 1825).<ref>Beales, Derek. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4556 "Canning, George (1770–1827)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, online edition, January 2008, accessed 23 August 2013</ref> With no money of his own, Disraeli borrowed money to invest. He became involved with the financier [[J. D. Powles]], who was prominent among those encouraging the mining boom. In 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies.<ref>Blake (1967), pp. 24–26</ref> The pamphlets were published by John Murray, who invested heavily in the boom.<ref>Zachs, William, Peter Isaac, Angus Fraser and William Lister, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/64907 "Murray family (per. 1768–1967)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, online edition, May 2009, accessed 23 August 2013; and Blake (1967), p. 25</ref>

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Murray had ambitions to establish a new morning paper to compete with ''[[The Times]]''.<ref name=b16/> In 1825 Disraeli convinced him that he should proceed. The new paper, ''[[The Representative (newspaper)|The Representative]]'', promoted the mines and those politicians who supported them, particularly Canning. Disraeli impressed Murray with his energy and commitment to the project, but he failed in his key task of persuading the eminent writer [[John Gibson Lockhart]] to edit the paper. After that, Disraeli's influence on Murray waned, and to his resentment he was sidelined in the affairs of ''The Representative''.<ref name=b16>Bradford, pp. 16–21</ref> The paper survived only six months, partly because the mining [[Stock market bubble|bubble]] burst in late 1825, and partly because, according to Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited".<ref>Blake (1967), pp. 33–34</ref>

The bursting of the mining bubble was ruinous for Disraeli. By June 1825 he and his business partners had lost £7,000. Disraeli could not pay off the last of his debts from this debacle until 1849.<ref name=dnb>Parry, Jonathan. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7689 "Disraeli, Benjamin, earl of Beaconsfield (1804–1881)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', online edition, May 2011, accessed 23 August 2013 {{subscription}}</ref> He turned to writing, motivated partly by his desperate need for money, and partly by a wish for revenge on Murray and others by whom he felt slighted.<ref>Bradford, p. 22</ref> There was a vogue for what was called "silver-fork fiction"—novels depicting aristocratic life, usually by anonymous authors, read by the aspirational middle classes.<ref>Blake (1967), p. 35; and Bradford, p. 22</ref> Disraeli's first novel, ''[[Vivian Grey]]'', published anonymously in four volumes in 1826–27, was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of ''The Representative''.<ref name=dxii>Disraeli (1975), p. xii</ref> It sold well, but caused much offence in influential circles when the authorship was discovered.<ref name=dxii/> Disraeli, then just 23, did not move in high society, as the numerous [[solecism]]s in his book made obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Murray and Lockhart, men of great influence in literary circles, believed that Disraeli had caricatured them and abused their confidence—an accusation denied by the author but repeated by many of his biographers.<ref>Blake (1967), pp. 42–43; Bradford, p. 25; Hibbert, p. 25; Kuhn, p. 56; and Ridley, p. 48</ref> In later editions Disraeli made many changes, softening his satire, but the damage to his reputation proved long-lasting.<ref name=dnb/>

Disraeli's biographer Jonathan Parry writes that the financial failure and personal criticism that Disraeli suffered in 1825 and 1826 were probably the trigger for a serious nervous crisis affecting him over the next four years: "He had always been moody, sensitive, and solitary by nature, but now became seriously depressed and lethargic."<ref name=dnb/> He was still living with his parents in London, but in search of the "change of air" recommended by the family's doctors, Isaac took a succession of houses in the country and on the coast, before Disraeli sought wider horizons.<ref>Blake (1982), p. 5</ref>