Thomas Carlyle
Author
Formats
Description
Past and Present is a book by Thomas Carlyle.[1] It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Cromwell. He was, inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close...
Author
Description
First published in 1837, Carlyle initially was asked to write this account by his overworked friend John Stuart Mill. Taking the commission to heart, Carlyle proceeded to write a historical masterpiece, combining a scrupulous consideration for facts with a unique style of writing. Rather than a detached account of this turbulent time, Carlyle uses poetic prose that makes readers feel almost as though they are participants in the riots, public executions,...
Author
Description
These essays, or "pamphlets," published in 1850, are a vehement denunciation of what Thomas Carlyle believed to be the political, social, and religious injustices of the era. The collection's best known essay is "Hudson's Statue," an attack on plans to erect a monument in honor of the bankrupted financier and "railway king" George Hudson.
Author
Description
Excerpt: "Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more, or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature...
Author
Description
Thomas Carlyle undertook this biography of his friend, the British author John Sterling (1806—1844), because he was so dissatisfied with an earlier biography of Sterling by Julius Charles Hare. Sterling was an ordained curate at Hurstmonceux, but retired and began writing. His highest literary achievements were the articles he published in Blackwood's Magazine such as, "The Onyx Ring" and "The Palace of Morgana." Carlyle's biography has since become...
Author
Description
This 1869 miscellany of articles, letters, and speeches by and about Carlyle highlights his restless intellect and wide-ranging interests. The volume begins, "The general belief that Carlyle is a gloomy misanthrope...is quite an error." Contents include "Goethe and Carlyle," "Preface to Emerson's Essays," "Advice to a Young Man," and more.