ABSTRACT
Sybil was part of a trilogy of novels – preceded by Coningsby and followed by Tancred – used by the young politician to challenge the ascendancy of liberalism, employing romanticism and paternalism to revamp the brand of conservatism. Disraeli’s Young England movement upheld the virtues of a responsible aristocracy and, in the process, critiqued the ethics of the newly emergent middle classes as well as those aristocrats who had lost their sense of social responsibility and divided the country into rich and poor. The gaping chinks admitted every blast; the leaning chimneys had lost half their original height; the rotten rafters were evidently misplaced. While in many instances the thatch, yawning in some parts to admit the wind and wet, and in all utterly unfit for its original purpose of giving protection from the weather, looked more like the top of a dunghill than a cottage.
