D'Israeli, Isaac (1766–1848)

English scholar and literary historian. He was the father of Benjamin Disraeli and author of Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834; in six volumes) and The Literary Character (1795).

Other works include Calamities of Authors (1812), Quarrels of Authors (1814), an Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James I (1816), and Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I (1828–30).

D'Israeli was born into a Jewish family but in 1817, after a quarrel with the synagogue, he withdrew from the congregation, and had his children baptized. Many years later, in his anonymous Genius of Judaism (1833), he wrote enthusiastically of the Jews in early days, but claimed to have outgrown the superstitious practices still followed by his contemporaries.