Thomas Carlyle, British Historian, Essayist and Leading Social Critic of Victorian England

“Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth-century British historian and essayist believed that leaders shape and determine history…. was convinced that “history is the biography of great men,” the greatest of them being kings. The very word king, Carlyle contended, derives from the ancient word Can-ning, which means “Able-man” (although his etymology can be disputed). In Carlyle’s view, the Ablemen (and Ablewomen) of the human species direct the course of history and determine humanity’s destiny.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Name: Thomas Carlyle
Birth Date: December 1795 – February 1881
Job Functions: Historian, Essayist
Fields: History and Literature

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Mini Biography of Thomas Carlyle

British Historian, Essayist and Leading Social Critic of Victorian England, Thomas Carlyle was born close to the end of the 18^th century in Scotland. His father was a staunch Calvinist. Thomas attended Annan Grammar school and later Edinburgh University in 1809 where he distinguished himself in mathematics. He was also a voracious reader. It was Thomas’ intention to enter ministry, but he changed his mind because he lost his faith while attending university, and first worked as a mathematics schoolteacher until he began a literary career as a freelance journalist. In 1817, a reading of Edward Gibbon precipitated Carlyle’s rejection of the Bible.

Who Influenced Thomas Carlyle

Madame de Staël’s Germany, Volume 1… influenced him deeply, as well as introduced Carlyle to German thought and literature. He also liked the writing of Johann von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Voltaire, François Fénelon, and the scientific works of Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin.

In 1821, Carlyle met Jane Baillie Welsh, whom he married five years later. In August 1822, Carlyle had a transformative religious experience on Leith Walk in Edinburgh, where he suffered an intense crisis of faith and conversion, which he later wrote about in Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics.

“His personal vision convinced him that a transcendental, godly presence animated the universe and put him at odds with what he saw as the wicked materialism of the times and its adjutants: pride, secularism, agnosticism, liberalism, and democracy.”

Thomas Carlyle: A BiographyThomas CarlyleThomas CarlyleThomas CarlyleThomas Carlyle

In 1823 – 1824, Thomas published a Life of Schiller (Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle: The Life of Friedrich Schiller, Comprehending an Examination of His Works) in the London Magazine, and in 1824, he translated Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Carlyle made his first trip to London where he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other leading literary figures of the day. When he returned to Scotland, he married Jane Baillie Welsh in August 1826. Carlyle and his wife first lived in Edinburgh until they relocated in 1828 to Craigenputtock where they lived on a farm owned by his wife’s family. In 1927, Carlyle translated the work of prominent German writers and published them in a four volumes known as German Romance.

While in Edinburgh and Craigenputtock, Carlyle wrote a series of distinguished essays for the Edinburgh Review and the Foreign Review, which were compiled and published as Miscellaneous and Critical Essays (Critical and miscellaneous essays, collected and republished. Vol. IV). Some of these essays were on Robert Burns, Johann von Goethe and Jean Paul Freidrich Richter and Signs of the Times, which was Carlyle’s first essay on social problems. In 1828, Carlyle wrote and published Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics), which was originally rejected by London publishers. Fraser’s Magazine agreed to serialize it in 1833 to 1834. Initially, Sartor Resartus met with little success, but its popularity developed over the years.

While living at the Craigenputtock farm, Carlyle began a lifelong friendship with the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sartor Resartus was published in book form in Boston in 1836, with a preface by Ralph Waldo Emerson, influencing the development of New England Transcendentalism. The first English edition of the book followed in 1838.

In 1834, Carlyle and Jane moved to Chelsea, London where he acquired the name, “Sage of Chelsea.” In London, he became a member of a literary circle which included essayists Leigh Hunt and John Stuart Mill. Writing Sartor Resartus had matured Carlyle as a writer, so he decided to graduate to much longer works. He started to study the French Revolution and Mills encouraged him, by giving Carlyle his own notes on the subject.

The French Revolution published in 1837, cemented Carlyle on the literary map. Instead of writing a factual account of the French Revolution like most historical writing, Carlyle immersed himself in the subject, capturing the spirit and focusing on the drama of the event – he highlighted personalities and circumstances. He was able to animate history.

Using the Pen to Address Social Problems

After the publication of The French Revolution, Carlyle immediately turned his attention to the social problems in England by way of essays and biographies. In 1939, he published Chartism…, and in 1943, his book, Past and Present which dealt with the social problems caused by the industrial revolution in England.

Thomas Carlyle Gains Acclaim

Carlyle gained acclaim and his popularity led him to give several series of lectures on German literature, the history of literature, modern European revolutions, and finally, and most significantly, on heroes and hero worship. In 1841, Carlyle published these lectures, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History blended mythology with metaphysics “to produce an image of the ideal type of individual needed as the saviour of humankind.”

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History celebrates eleven disparate figures grouped into six categories:

1. “The hero as divinity (Odin)
2. The hero as prophet (Mahomet [Mohammed] Muh ammad)
3. The hero as poet (Dante, Shakespeare)
4. The hero as priest (Martin Luther, John Knox)
5. The hero as man of letters (Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Burns)
6. The hero as king (Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon).”

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in Literature also led to two larger projects later in his career: Oliver Cromwell and Fredrick the Great. In 1845, Carlyle published, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle: Volume 1), a collection of Cromwell’s letters and speeches connected by narrative and commentary. From 1852 to 1865 he laboured on the six-volume Carlyle's Frederick the Great, a biography of Frederick the Great (1865).

Carlyle was elected as Rector of Edinburgh University the in 1865, the same year his wife Jane died. Between 1866 and 1869, Carlyle headed a committee that defended Governor Edward John Eyre of Jamaica – who had suppressed a rebellion of plantation workers in Morant Bay, allowing at least 439 people to be killed retributively – in a fierce public debate. This debate pitted Carlyle and his colleagues Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, and Alfred Tennyson against Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, and Herbert Spencer.

Some of the People Who Thomas Carlyle Influenced

Thomas Carlyle influenced a number of his younger contemporaries such as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley, John Ruskin, and James Froude. He also influenced later Victorian writers.

“His impact is present in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845), John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), and in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1852–1853) and Hard Times (1854), the latter being dedicated to Carlyle. Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was based largely on Carlyle’s French Revolution, which Dickens claimed to have read hundreds of times.”

Thomas Carlyle’s Steps to Success

• Believed in and practiced continuous learning.
• Kept on writing and created a substantial body of work.
• Had a support network.

Why Thomas Carlyle’s Contribution Matters

Thomas Carlyle not only left us a body of work to enjoy, but he also influenced some of the writers we love dearly, such as Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin and Alfred Tennyson.

Thomas Carlyle Books

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in HistoryThe French Revolution: A History (Modern Library Classics)Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics)Carlyle: Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)Past and PresentDelphi Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle (Illustrated) (Series Five Book 12)Latter-Day PamphletsThe Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle: The Complete Works PergamonMedia (Highlights of World Literature)On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in HistoryChartism (1840) by Thomas CarlyleThe Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. IEarly Kings of Norway

Works Cited/Referenced

New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Encyclopedia of World Biography
Encyclopedia of Religion
Encyclopedia of European Social History
Europe 1789 to 1914
American History Through Literature, 1820 – 1870
Encyclopedia of Philosophy