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1880 novel by Benjamin Disraeli

Endymion is a novel published in 1880 by Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, the former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was paid an advance of £10,000 for it (10000.0 in 1880 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years). It was the last novel Disraeli published before his death. He had been writing another, Falconet, when he died; it was published, incomplete, after his death.

Like most of Disraeli's novels, Endymion is a romance, although Disraeli took the unusual step of setting it between 1819 and 1859. This meant that the hero of the novel–Endymion Ferrars–had to be a Whig, rather than a Tory. The time period that Disraeli chose was dominated by the Whig party; there would have been little opportunity for a young, rising Tory. Given that, it seems likely that Disraeli chose the time period in order to move a final time in the world in which he grew up and began his ascent.

William Pitt Ferrars, a rising Tory politician with cabinet ambitions, is disappointed of his hopes by the fall of the Tory ministry of the Duke of Wellington in 1832, and his party's overwhelming defeat in that year's parliamentary election. He retires from his opulent house in Hill Street, London, to the modest country estate of Hurstley; his failure to reenter the government in Sir Robert Peel's brief ministry in 1835, and his inability to secure a parliamentary seat in the subsequent elections, leads his wife to die of sorrow and disillusionment, and ultimately to his own suicide. He leaves behind him two adolescent children, Endymion and Myra, who are determined to redeem their father's legacy. Endymion has received a clerkship in Somerset House, a government office, and takes lodgings at the home of the Rodneys, former protégés of his parents; at Somerset House he becomes acquainted with fellow clerks Trenchard, Seymour Hicks, and the aspiring but pretentious novelist St. Barbe; Trenchard lays the foundations for his future career by introducing him to the debating club of the politically minded Bertie Tremaine. In the meantime his sister is hired as a companion to the daughter of Adrian Neuchatel, a great Whig magnate and banker. Myra becomes a favorite member of the household, and her position enables her to introduce Endymion to the high society of the Whig party. Myra herself is wooed and won by Lord Roehampton, secretary of state in the Melbourne ministry. This places her in a position to forward Endymion's career, and she recommends him for private secretary to the Whig cabinet minister Sidney Wilton, an old friend of her father. Her brother distinguishes himself. In the elections of 1841, however, the Whigs are voted out of office, and Endymion loses his position. He compensates for this by getting elected to parliament in a constituency controlled by the Whig Lord Montfort, whose wife Endymion has befriended. In Parliament, under the guidance of Lord Roehampton, Endymion's makes his mark among the Whig opposition; and when his party returns to power in 1846 he becomes under secretary of state to Lord Roehampton; when the latter dies of overwork, Endymion resigns rather than serve under his successor. Meanwhile, Prince Florestan, a pretender in exile from his country, whom Endymion knew at Eton, has returned to his country and successfully established himself on his throne. He now offers the widowed Myra (whom he has met at the Neuchatels) the crown as his queen. She accepts. Endymion, devastated at this separation from his sister, finds consolation in the love of Lady Montfort, whose husband has died. Although his party is soon again evicted from government, he is now a prominent member of the out of power Whigs, headed by Sidney Wilton; with the fall of the Tory ministry Sidney Wilton becomes Prime Minister, and Endymion his secretary of state; through success in foreign wars and prosperous management of relations with the continent, Endymion makes himself the natural successor to Sidney Wilton. When the latter resigns, Endymion is charged by the queen with the formation of the next government.

The novel is full of political lessons and conceits, and its pictures of aristocratic circles, with the semi ministerial management of English affairs by the queens of fashionable society on behalf of their Endymions, not only expose the romance of Disraeli's own life, but also reveal the things behind the scenes which, perhaps, none so well could have done as this Jewish ex premier of England in the literary winding up of his strange eventful life. It is this inner view of Disraeli's novel which gives its real significance.

Internet Archive: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. (The author's name appears only on the spine.)