Michael Flavin demonstrates the way in which a critically unexplored novel, 'Venetia', sheds light on Disraeli's political formation. Michael Flavin discusses Venetia (1837), is a transitional novel in Disraeli’s literary and political development. It is transitional because, in playing through an established tension in Disraeli’s literary work between the visionary and the expedient, Venetia, unusually for Disraeli, sides with the expedient more than the visionary.