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The work of Queen’s University’s Disraeli Project will be the focus of a presentation at a special one-day symposium about the former British prime minister to be held at Oxford University.

Michel W. Pharand, the director of the Disraeli Project, was invited to speak to a group of Benjamin Disraeli scholars on March 24. This will be a great opportunity, Dr. Pharand points out, to get the word out on the research done at the Project.

Decades of research by the Project’s team of scholars has involved annotating the more than 12,000 letters written by Disraeli, half of which have now been published in 10 volumes in the University of Toronto Press’s series Benjamin Disraeli Letters.

Another great opportunity the symposium offers, says Dr. Pharand, is to make connections with other experts in the field.

“There’s going to be a number of scholars there. All of us giving papers are Disraeli people. Although I’ve not met any of them, I know many of them by name and reputation. I’ve read some of their books,” Dr. Pharand says. “It’s essentially a one-day opportunity to bring the world’s Disraeli experts together in a public forum open to all.”

There is also a big development on the horizon for the Disraeli Project: this year it celebrates its 40^th anniversary with the online publication, most likely in September, of most of the project’s published letters and all of its unpublished ones.

“That has become a very important aspect of the Disraeli Project: world access to our collection. Of course none of the letters will have annotations, the scholarly material that make our books so valuable,” Dr. Pharand explains. “For that, people will have to wait until the books are published.”