The most important writings by the great and controversial Victorian polemicist. Carlyle was one of the great figures of his age: thunderous, passionate, irascible, sceptical and idealistic. This selection is representative of all stages of Carlyle's career, and includes 'Sign of the Times', his essay against the mechanization of the age and the rise of the machines; the whole of 'Chartism'; and extracts from The French Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, as well as other pieces. The book also includes an introduction and notes by Alan Shelston. Thomas Carlyle was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1795. Intended by his family to become a Presbyterian minister, he was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment while at the University of Edinburgh and became a teacher instead. He later turned to literary work, publishing a life of Schiller and translations of Goethe in the 1820s. His first truly successful book was The French Revolution, which was followed by many others. He died in 1881. Alan Shelston was Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester until retirement in 2002. He has edited a number of Gaskell's works including The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1975) and North and South (2005), and was joint editor with John Chapple of The Further Letters of Mrs Gaskell (2000). He has published a selection of Hardy's poetry and written on a number of nineteen century authors including Dickens and Henry James.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was one of the most influential authors of the nineteenth century. Eagerly studied at the highest level of intellectual society, his satirical essays and perceptive historical biographies caused him to be regarded for much of the Victorian period as a literary genius and eminent social philosopher. After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1814, he published his first scholarly work on German literature in 1824, before finding literary success with his ground-breaking history of the French Revolution in 1837. After falling from favour during the first part of the twentieth century, his work has more recently become the subject of scholarly re-examination. His introduction of German literature and philosophy into the British intellectual milieu profoundly influenced later philosophical ideas and literary studies. These volumes are reproduced from the 1896 Centenary Edition of his collected works. Volume 10 contains his social commentary Past and Present.

Essays on Literature brings together ten of the most important literary reviews and essays written by the acclaimed Victorian philosopher, social critic, and essayist Thomas Carlyle. Spanning his writing career, the essays allow the reader to track Carlyle's development as a reviewer and stylist, the evolution of his perennial themes, and the tremendous impact of his writing on the development of British and American literature. In keeping with the Norman and Charlotte Strouse Edition of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle, these essays are accompanied by a thorough historical introduction to the material, extensive notes providing historical and cultural context while expanding on references and allusions, and a textual apparatus that carefully details and explains the editorial decisions made in reconciling the many editions of each essay.

Historical Essays provides an authoritative critical, annotated edition of Carlyle's essays on history and historical subjects.

Originally published in 1921, this volume contains the first of the Latter-Day Pamphlets by radical thinker Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).