Life Of Thomas Carlyle

Pulitzer Prize finalist: “The definitive biography”of the Victorian-era writer and historian (The Times Literary Supplement). A Pulitzer finalist that draws upon years of research and unpublished letters, Thomas Carlyle examines the life of the Victorian genius. Carlyle was the author of Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution: A History, and he possessed one of literature’s most flamboyant prose styles. Despite a childhood beset by anxiety and illness, Carlyle was indefatigable in his literary production. Fred Kaplan delves into the author’s intense personal life, which includes his turbulent marriage to author Jane Baillie Welsh and his disillusionment with religion. Kaplan is a devoted and sensitive explicator, vividly resurrecting both Carlyle and his Victorian setting.

'A brilliant and scholarly biography of an extraordinary figure.' Lord Blake, Country Life 'A fresh, engaging, conscientious account of one of the great Victorians.' Michael Foot, London Review of Books 'A thorough and convincing account of 'the sage''. Peter Ackroyd, Times Thomas Carlyle was the most influential man of letters of his day, and his vivid account of the French Revolution remains one of the classic histories. Even George Eliot, no admirer, wrote: 'It is an idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence; if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttes on his funeral pyre, it would only be like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest.' Simon Heffer draws upon previously unavailable papers to reassess a magnificent, defiant and often lonely individualist whose idiosyncratic and passionate books brought him universal fame.

Reproduction of the original: Life of Robert Burns by Thomas Carlyle