The Puffing of Vivian Grey: The Young Disraeli and the Marketing of Literature in 1820s

This essay offers a critical survey of the run-up to the publication of Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, part I (1826), and its immediate aftermath, which I read in the context of some specific innovations and concomitant experimentations brought about by the burgeoning print culture of the time. My focus is on the new marketing techniques in the publishing industry, the anonymity-celebrity nexus, and the reception of the roman-à-clef. Drawing on such invaluable electronic resources as ProQuest’s British Periodicals Collection II and the British Newspaper Archive, I trace the main steps in Colburn’s marketing campaign, and in the unveiling of the anonymous author’s identity. Sidelining the (ever intriguing) biographical/ psychological aspects of the Vivian Grey affair, I highlight the dynamics of the young Disraeli’s insertion into the literary marketplace.