SOURCE: "Two Nations, or One?: Disraeli's Allegorical Romance," Victorian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, Winter, 1987, pp. 211-34.

In this essay, O'Kell examines Sybil in terms of its political, religious, and allegorical content, distinguishing it from the psychological romances typical of Disraeli's early work.

The popularity of Coningsby: Or The New Generation when it first appeared in May 1844 was undoubtedly part of what prompted Disraeli to begin immediately writing another "political" novel. But part of his motive must also have been his realization that the enormous success of Coningsby derived less from any appreciation of his reflexive attempt to define the proper contemporary role of heroic sensibility than from the widespread conviction that he had produced a "manifesto of Young England" and, not so incidentally, another sensational roman à clef.¹ Disraeli knew, however, that in Coningsby his "romance" had run away with his theme before he had fully developed the social implications...