it new life as an inspiring and romantic proto-Zionist saga of a man who would fire the imagination of a people". Significance For students of politics, Alroy is significant both for the fact that it portrays its author’s "ideal ambition" and for it being the only novel by Disraeli, born a Jew and then baptised into the Church of England, with a "distinctive Hebrew subject". In considering the "obscure" meaning of this ambition to be a "Jewish hero blessed, like Disraeli, with a devoted sister," Philip Guedalla, in the introduction to the 1927 Bradenham edition of the novel, surmises that, "it is not easy to believe that [Disraeli] ever played, even in fancy, with the notion of a Jewish career...and, possibly judicious, kept his ideal ambition strictly segregated from his real." References Novels by Benjamin Disraeli 1833 British novels Books written by prime ministers of the United Kingdom