June 11 [1827].—The attendance on the Committee, and afterwards the general meeting of the Oil Gas Company took up my morning, and the rest dribbled away in correcting proofs and trifling; reading, among the rest, an odd volume of Vivian Grey; clever, but not so much so as to make me, in this sultry weather, go up-stairs to the drawing-room to seek the other volumes. Ah! villain, but you smoked when you read.—Well, Madam, perhaps I think the better of the book for that reason.
June 11, 1827 finds Sir Walter Scott starting Benjamin Disraeli's first novel, Vivian Grey. Like Scott, Disraeli published his first novel anonymously. Unlike Scott, his authorship was discovered very quickly. Vivian Grey was not a major success, but Disraeli went on to publish 17 other novels, and had a pretty successful political career, including the Prime Ministership in 1874.
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