D'ISRAELI, Isaac, English author: b. Lon don, 11 May 1766; d. Buckinghamshire, 19 Jan. 1848. His father, Benjamin D'Israeli, was the descendant of a family of Spanish Jews which had settled at Venice in the 15th century to escape the persecutions of the Inquisition. He was educated at Enfield and Amsterdam. In 1791 appeared the first volume of his ties of Literature,' the most entertaining of his works and that by which he is best known at the present day. This work, the sixth and concluding volume of which was published in 1834, passed through 12 editions in the author's lifetime. Its success was such as to determine D'Israeli to pursue the same path through the literary field, the collection of instructive and amusing gossip relative to literary men and their writings. From this period up to 1812 he appears to have been principally engaged in the collection and preparation of literary materials, the results of his labors appearing in the fol lowing works, published between that year and 1822: 'Calamities of Authors' ; 'Quarrels of Authors, or Memoirs of Literary Controversy' and into the Literary and Political Character of. James I.> These were afterward
published collectively under the title of lanies of Literature.' In 1828 appeared the commencement of his 'Life and Reign of Charles I,) a work completed in 1830. In 1841 appeared his of Literature.' He also wrote several romances. D'Israeli was a man of a pensive and solitary turn of mind and his life was quite that of a literary recluse, spending the greater part of his time in his library, and on terms of friendship with Scott, Byron and Bulwer-Lytton. He abandoned Juda ism for Christianity in 1817. A memoir of him, prefixed to a new editibn of his 'Curiosities of Literature,' was published by his eldest son, Benjamin Disraeli, afterward Earl of Beacons field (q.v.).