Isaac Disraeli

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) was an English man of letters, the father of the prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. The son of a Jewish merchant of Italian origin, he was left free by his family's means to live among books, and his Curiosities of Literature, begun in 1791 and enlarged for forty years, became a favorite miscellany of anecdote and learned gossip; Calamities of Authors, Quarrels of Authors, a life of Charles I and Amenities of Literature followed. A quarrel with the synagogue of Bevis Marks in 1817 led him to have his children baptized, which made his son's political career possible. He went blind in his last years.