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Thomas Carlyle
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Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'Despising his job in a Birmingham factory, V.W. Garratt surrounded his workbench with a barricade of boxes, set up a small mirror to provide early warning of the foreman's approach and studied the Everyman's Library Sartor Resartus when he was being paid to solder gas-meter fittings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'As a seaman in the mid-1870s, Ben Tillett had not yet been exposed to revolutionary literature, "But I discovered Thomas Carlyle and was held spellbound by the dark fury of his spirit and the strange contortions of his style".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Tillett Print: Unknown
Thomas Carlyle :
'As a young South Wales miner, Edmund Stonelake, who had never heard of the French Revolution, asked a bookseller for something on the subject and was sold Carlyle. At first it was hard reading, but eventually he extracted an entire political education from its pages: "I learned...of the great and lasting influence the Revolution had on peoples and countries struggling to establish democratic principles in Government in various parts of the world".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Stonelake Print: Book, Unknown
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'Keir Hardie remembered that a "real turning point" of his life was his discovery of Sartor Resartus at age sixteen or seventeen. He had to read it through three times before he understood it: "I felt I was in the presence of some great power, the meaning of which I could only dimly guess at".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Keir Hardie Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'by age twenty [Mary Smith] had read and understood George Payne's Elements of Mental and Moral Science, Thomas Brown's Moral Philosophy, and Richard Whateley's Logic. But two authors in paticular offered magnificent revelations. First there was Emerson on Nature; and later, as a governess for a Scotby leatherworks owner, she discovered Thomas Carlyle: "Emerson and he henceforth became my two great masters of thought for the rest of my life. Carlyle's gospel of Work and exposure of Shams, and his universal onslaught on the nothings and appearances of society, gave strength and life to my vague but true enthusiasm. They proved a new Bible of blessedness to my eager soul, as they did thousands beside, who had become weary of much of the vapid literature of the time".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
At age fourteen, Elizabeth Bryson read Sartor Resartus, a favorite book of her father, an impoverished Dundee bookkeeper. There she encountered "the exciting experience of being kindled to the point of explosion by the fire of words", words that expressed what she had always been trying to say: "It seems that from our earliest days we are striving to become articulate, stuggling to clothe in words our vague perceptions and questionings. Suddenly, blazing from the printed page, there ARE the words, the true resounding words that we couldn't find. It is an exciting moment... 'Who am I? The thing that can say I. Who am I, what is this ME?'. I had been groping to know that since I was three". She consumed Heroes and Hero-Worship, The French Revolution and Sartor Resartus with the same intoxication'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bryson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Heroes and Hero-worship
At age fourteen, Elizabeth Bryson read Sartor Resartus, a favorite book of her father, an impoverished Dundee bookkeeper. There she encountered "the exciting experience of being kindled to the point of explosion by the fire of words", words that expressed what she had always been trying to say: "It seems that from our earliest days we are striving to become articulate, stuggling to clothe in words our vague perceptions and questionings. Suddenly, blazing from the printed page, there ARE the words, the true resounding words that we couldn't find. It is an exciting moment... 'Who am I? The thing that can say I. Who am I, what is this ME?'. I had been groping to know that since I was three". She consumed Heroes and Hero-Worship, The French Revolution and Sartor Resartus with the same intoxication'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bryson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution
At age fourteen, Elizabeth Bryson read Sartor Resartus, a favorite book of her father, an impoverished Dundee bookkeeper. There she encountered "the exciting experience of being kindled to the point of explosion by the fire of words", words that expressed what she had always been trying to say: "It seems that from our earliest days we are striving to become articulate, stuggling to clothe in words our vague perceptions and questionings. Suddenly, blazing from the printed page, there ARE the words, the true resounding words that we couldn't find. It is an exciting moment... 'Who am I? The thing that can say I. Who am I, what is this ME?'. I had been groping to know that since I was three". She consumed Heroes and Hero-Worship, The French Revolution and Sartor Resartus with the same intoxication'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bryson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Heroes and Hero Worship
'Labour Party pioneer F.W. Jowett..., reading Heroes and Hero-Worship as a young millworker, was attracted by its vision of a new society but repelled by its authoritarianism: "there must have been something in me that could not respond to his powerful and eloquent glorification of the supermen - including the captains of industry who would organise production not for profit but for use - for in all things else he made a deep impression on my young mind... The more I read of Carlyle's heroes, the less attraction they had. I did not like his Luther, his Frederick the Great, nor his Cromwell... the more Carlyle crowned and canonised the ruling class, the more I felt I was on the side of the common people'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'[Robert Blatchford] found Sartor Resartus intimidating: "after reading the famous meditaton on the sleeping city, I threw the book across the room. I felt I should never be able to write like that".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The Life of John Sterling
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution
'[Emrys Hughes] read the social history of Macaulay, Froude, and J.R. Green; Thorold Rogers's Six Centuries of Work and Wages particularly appealed to him because it offered "not the history of kings and queens, but of the way ordinary people ha struggled to live throughout the centuries..." Hughes was one of those agitators who found a virtual Marxism in Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution inspired the hope that a popular revolt somewhere would end the war...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
"Yet I could not but observe the difference with zeal with which I snatched at a volume of Carlyle or Ruskin- since these magicians were now first revealing themselves to me- and the increasing languor with which I took up Alford for my daily 'passage' [i.e.of Bible study]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Shooting Niagara
?I hope that you have read Carlyle in August Macmillan & that you appreciate him. Of course it is damned nonsense but nonsense of a genius & not without a certain point. We have a lot of effete things in this blessed old country & a good rush over Niagara will do us all good in the world? Only it is melancholy to see him begging the aristocracy to come & help poor England out of the slough. If that is it, we shall have to stick there, I fear, till doomsday.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : History of the French Revolution
"4/2/1845 - I am also reading Carlyle's History of the French Revolution - full of genius, pathos, and pictures; with all its faults (and it has great ones) still, I can hardly lay it down."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution
"Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1858) emphasized the value of her childhood reading in forming her guiding principles. Uncle Tom's Cabin fused with talk of bazaars, relief funds, and subscriptions in her Manchester home to awaken first an admiration for fighting spirit and heroic sacrifice, and then an appreciation of a gentler, restorative spirit ... other favourite childhood books which remained a lifelong source of inspiration ... [were]: Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, the Odyssey, and Carlyle's French Revolution. Her interest in politics she traced to reading the paper aloud to her father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pankhurst Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'Uncle Richard had adored Ruskin, and worshipped Morris, and had slept for years with a copy of "In Memoriam" under his pillow. He told me once how he and his friends used to wait outside the bookshops in the early morning, when they heard that a new volume of Tennyson was to come out. He had read all Browning too, and all Wordsworth, and Carlyle, in fact nearly everything contemporary; and he constantly re-read the Classics in their own classic tongues... a triumph of timing occurred once when he was listening to the Thunderstorm in the Pastoral Symphony, and reading the thunderstorm in "Oedipus at Colonus", and a real thunderstorm took place!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Litchfield Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The Early Letters of Carlyle
Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton, 6 December 1886: "I ought long ago to have thanked you for your very substantial present of Carlyle ... I read the two volumes with exceeding interest ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Cromwell
'We are reading Carlyle's "Cromwell" and "Aurora Leigh" again in the evenings. I am still in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", with Shelley's Poems and snatches of "Natural History".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Frederick the Great
'I have begun Carlyle's "Life of Frederic the Great".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'From Miss [Lucy] Harrison [...] [Charlotte Mew] had heard time and again a reading of Carlyle's "Everlasting No" from "Sartor Resartus".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [an article]
'we read one of Carlyle's articles, at the T. Sedgwicks'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Matineau and Mary Appleton Print: Unknown
Thomas Carlyle : Chartism
'"Chartism" gave me more pleasure and less pain than I expected: but the more I think it over the worse it looks. There is a fine sympathy with the many at the bottom; but it is stuck all thro' with prejudices and bits of injustice, as thick as a tipsy cake with almonds; and the excessive conceit, connected with want of knowledge, will do him harm. I think it will do no other harm, and a great deal of good...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
'"Past and Present",
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia, called Frederick the Great [extracts of]
'I suppose one ought to read [Carlyle's] "Fred": but the extracts do look such a hash of his old sayings that one has no great appetite'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : Article on Burns
Harriet Martineau, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Journal, 14 January [?1835]: 'Read Carlyle's article on Burns. Was mightily cheered and lifted up by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Unknown
Thomas Carlyle : French Revolution
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Life of Pascal
'Tell David Fergusson that I am charmed with his manuscript [a handwritten copy of Carlyle's "Life of Pascal"]; it is the prettiest [that] ever was written for the Encyclopaedia, and perfectly correct.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Sheet, Handwritten copy of Carlyle's own text
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'Later I had determined to spend a Whit-Monday at the Alexandra Palace, and on my way thither bought an eighteen-penny copy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus". Arriving at the Palace I sat down in a quiet corner to look through its pages. Fascinated, I read and read; hour succeeded hour; swings and roundabouts passed into oblivion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Okey Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Heroes and Hero Worship
'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [uknown]
Second confinement in the Prison at Hull: 'I remember how when the light began to fail of evenings, I often risked punishment by getting up to my window to finish an essay by Macaulay, whose style charmed me, or one of those vibrant, pulpitating lectures on hero-worship by Carlyle!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [uknown]
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Criticism on Faust (working title)
'I have read the Tragedies - I thank you for them - they are Byron's. Need I praise them. I have also read your eloquent history of Faust - For it too I think you. It has fewer faults and greater merits than its Author led me to expect -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Bailie Welsh Manuscript: Sheet, Draft of essay due to be published in the Review
Thomas Carlyle : Heroes and Hero-Worship
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 19 February 1856: 'I came here [Bournemouth] for a fortnight and have stayed a month. I have written a little, and read a good deal, -- the second volume of [italics]Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life[end italics], which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and [italics]Hypatia[end italics] and two sermons of Dr. Pusey's against Germanism, and part of [italics]Hero Worship[end italics], to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of [italics]The Times[end italics] every evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Letter dated 13 February 1822
'Well Sir - I have to thank you for your last, which certainly is the most tasteful Epistle I ever, in my life, received. I verily believe there is not a word of it, that could offend the nicest tastem or most musical ear - All is harmony, from beginning to end - and the Metaphor and Antithesis in which it abounds render the style surprisingly rich & striking.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 1 May 1843: 'I have been reading Carlyle .. his "Past & Present" -- There is nothing new in it -- even of Carlyleism .... but almost everything true -- I am a devotee of Carlyle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Cruthers and Johnson
'You did not mean me to return your story? I hope not - I shall soon be able to say it by heart - how I envy you! I would give Shandy and my pearl necklace to be able to write such an other - but that I shall never be!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
Thomas Carlyle : Proofs of 'Schiller's Life and Writings'
'Even as it is, I contrive to in general to get along very reasonably. Jack comes down to me every night: we have a talk and a walk: we correct the Printer's sheets together, and are very happy. He is a kind faithful slut of a fellow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: ProofsManuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Proofs of 'Schiller's Life and Writings'
Even as it is, I contrive to in general to get along very reasonably. Jack comes down to me every night: we have a talk and a walk: we correct the Printer's sheets together, and are very happy. He is a kind faithful slut of a fellow.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Carlyle Print: ProofsManuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
Virginia Woolf to Margaret Llewelyn Davies, 23 January 1916: 'I've been reading Carlyle's Past and Present [1843], and wondering whether all his rant has made a scrap of difference practically [...] I become steadily more feminist, owing to the Times, which I read at breakfast and wonder how this preposterous masculine fiction [the war] keeps going a day longer -- without some vigorous young woman pulling us together and marching through it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : 'reminiscences'
Friday 15 April 1921: 'I have been lying recumbent all day reading Carlyle, and now Macaulay, first to see if Carlyle wrote better than Lytton [Strachey], then to see if Macaulay sells better. Carlyle (reminiscences) is more colloquial and scrappy than I remembered, but he has his merits. -- more punch in his phrase than in Lytton's.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : unknown
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [letter approving 'Mary Barton']
'In looking over the book I see numerous errors regarding the part written in the Lancashire dialect; 'gotten' should always be 'getten'; &c. - In the midst of all my deep & great annoyance, Mr Carlyle's letter has been most valuable; and has given me almost the only unmixed pleasure I have yet received from MB.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : [encouraging letter about 'Mary Barton']
'I had a letter from Carlyle, and when I am over-filled with thoughts arising from this book, I put it all aside, (or [italics] try [end italics] to put it aside,) and think of his last sentence - 'May you live long to write good books, or do silently good actions which in my sight is far more indispensable'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : [article in 'London Examiner' on Chas Buller]
'Did you read a little piece of Carlyles on the death of Charles Buller, that appeared about a month ago in the London Examiner? I never heard of Chas Buller before; but was struck with the beautiful testimonial after his death; I think I can remember the exact words of one part - 'And in his patience with the much that he could not do, let us grant there was something very beautiful too'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'I never cd enter into Sartor Resartus, but I brought away one sentence which does capitally for a reference when I get perplexed sometimes. 'Do the duty that lies nearest to thee'.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [article in the 'Atlantic Monthly']
'I mean to read the Atlantic soon; I find 2 numbers, one from you with names of authors, for the which thank you; the second no. has no such names, - & I'll tell you what I've read & liked. Your paper on India, - but then that was not fair, because I knew it was yours, - Floyd Ireson's ride VERY much. Turkey tracts, - yes, I did, & I just defy you, if you said you didn't; and Florentine Mosaics. I cd not read the other story, - and I did not care for Carlyle. I liked yr paper in the first no. on our Exhibition - only there [italics] was [end italics] one Duccio da Siena, & you say there was not.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : [unknown]
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair. Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : [Works]
'I am reading Carlyle as usual. What a man! ... When I read men like C., I pant along happily at their skirts, thinking myself safe and then, not even knowing I'm there, [they] cuff me with a great fist of a phrase that sends me sprawling ... Reading C. one feels that [italics] nothing [end italics] is worth writing, least of all own tiny things. No one ever had less [italics] message [end italics] than I have and that my duty in times like these is hardly to 'chirrup' on a quiet bough...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Letter dated 20th January 1825
'Well! Dearest you have criticised my letter - it is now my turn to criticise yours. Be patient, then, and good-tempered, I beg; for you shall find me a severer critic than the Opiumeater-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Letter dated 29th July 1825
'My own, best, dearest Love I do believe I should have gone out of my senses, if your letter had been a day longer of coming. As it was they were obilged to put leeches on my temples to keep me quiet: they thought it was the fatigue of travelling which had made me ill again; and I did not take any pains to undeceive them. My God! what should I suffer, were I indeed to lose your regard, when the apprehension discomposes me thus?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Letter dated 4 August
'My dear Carlyle, I received your letter with the inclosed addressed to Mr Burns, which I had the pleasure of delivering to him about three weeks ago. I reached Edinburgh about mid-day; took the coach at three o'clock, and arrived in Haddington about seven.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Johnston Manuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Cromwell
The octogenarian Bewicke Blackburne to Alfred Tennyson, 6 August 1891: '"Long life to your honour," as Irish peasants used to say, and so say I, the man who was working the State quarry, on the Island of Valencia, when you spent a few days there in 1848, Chartist times in London and Fenian times in Ireland [...] Your sonorous reading to us after dinner sundry truculent passages in Daniel O'Connell's History of Ireland, which happened to be lying on my table, has lingered in my ears ever since. Seeing among my few books all that your friend Carlyle had up to that time published, you told me you thought he had nothing more to say. I was often reminded of this whilst reading his subsequent Cromwell and Frederick and Latter Days, and how near that was to the truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Bewicke Blackburne Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : 'Frederick'
The octogenarian Bewicke Blackburne to Alfred Tennyson, 6 August 1891: '"Long life to your honour," as Irish peasants used to say, and so say I, the man who was working the State quarry, on the Island of Valencia, when you spent a few days there in 1848, Chartist times in London and Fenian times in Ireland [...] Your sonorous reading to us after dinner sundry truculent passages in Daniel O'Connell's History of Ireland, which happened to be lying on my table, has lingered in my ears ever since. Seeing among my few books all that your friend Carlyle had up to that time published, you told me you thought he had nothing more to say. I was often reminded of this whilst reading his subsequent Cromwell and Frederick and Latter Days, and how near that was to the truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Bewicke Blackburne Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Latter Days
The octogenarian Bewicke Blackburne to Alfred Tennyson, 6 August 1891: '"Long life to your honour," as Irish peasants used to say, and so say I, the man who was working the State quarry, on the Island of Valencia, when you spent a few days there in 1848, Chartist times in London and Fenian times in Ireland [...] Your sonorous reading to us after dinner sundry truculent passages in Daniel O'Connell's History of Ireland, which happened to be lying on my table, has lingered in my ears ever since. Seeing among my few books all that your friend Carlyle had up to that time published, you told me you thought he had nothing more to say. I was often reminded of this whilst reading his subsequent Cromwell and Frederick and Latter Days, and how near that was to the truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Bewicke Blackburne Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Cromwell
'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Essay on Burns
'The best trumpet that I can suggest is to read Thomas Carlyle’s Essay on Burns. Sick as I am of reading anything in which so much as Burns’s name appears, I was really electrified (beg pardon for such a "Daily Telegraphism") by this. It is full of very fine criticism, expressed here and there in rather an old-fashioned academical style, full of beautiful humanity − see the noble passage about Burns having refused money for his songs − and full of wonderful wisdom. The whole conclusion is indeed admirable; as where he says that all fame, riches, fortune of all sorts is to true peace no more than “mounting to the house top to reach the stars”; and again about Byron: “the fire that was in him, was the mad fire of a volcano; and now we look sadly into the ashes of a crater which erelong[sic] will fill itself with snow.”. I subscribe to that essay. My own is quite unnecessary. Do read it; it will do you good; it would do the dead good. It has reminded me once again of the great mistake of my life − and of everybody else’s; that we are all trying to gain the whole world if you will, except what alone is worth keeping; our own soul. God bless T.Carlyle, say I. […] Read that essay, it is in volume two, […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
'My first vague realisation that poverty was the result of humanity's incompetence, and not an inviolable law of nature, had come with the sixteen-year-old reading of Carlyle's "Past and Present",'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Reminiscences
'You are right about that adorable book; F. and I are in a world, not ours; but pardon me, as far as sending on goes, we take another view; the first vol. a la bonne heure! but not - never - the second.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution
From Hallam Tennyson's account 'Of My Father's Illness': 'During our cruise [on The Sunbeam, Lord Brassey's yacht] my father drew upon his wonderful memory for some of his endless stories: Of [mentions various stories] [...] Of Hallam (the historian) saying to him, "I have tried to read Carlyle's French Revolution, but cannot get on, the style is so abominable."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Hallam Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Proofs
I guessed what was detaining your letter: but I scarcely dared to expect it on Saturday. It came in company with a quarter of a volume of Proofs, or I should have answered it yesterday. But the villainous sheets kept me working till midnight; and now I am to be busy beyond all measure for a week or more.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Proofs
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'You were not born when the influence [of Alfred Tennyson] in my case began. Fifty years ago, in the sixth chapter of Carlyle's Past and Present I found the line: "There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew"; 'to which was attached a footnote referring the line to Tennyson [...] This footnote assured me that Tennyson was a poet whose acquaintance must be made without delay. Not very long afterwards, two young men might have been seen eagerly engaged upon a volume, in the corner of a modest hotel in St Martin's Court, Covent Garden. The one read, the other listened. The one, after a life of usefulness and honour, was snatched from us last year by influenza, and now lies in Highgate Cemetery, the other remains to record the fact. The book in which my friend Hirst and I were then absorbed was entitled "Poems by Alfred Tennyson."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Title page and preface of 'German Romance'
'A pack of sheets came down on Monday morning, with a long letter from the Bibliophile requiring an alteration in the Title-page and Preface; then Jonathan on Wednesday morning; the management of all which things has occiped my whole disposable time till this morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Title page and prefaceManuscript: Letter
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
'I heard about the great Abbot Sampson, of the twelfth century, whom I was to meet again at the age of fourteen, when I read "Past and Present" while waiting in Westminster Abbey to hear Canon Farrar preach.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Life of Frederick the Great
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Began "Friedrich" to purpose and worked well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Yesterday hard at "Friedrich", then walk to Tilberthwaite ravine with Joan and Arthur'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Yesterday Mr Shields came and disturbed me, but I was glad to see him. Did some "Frederick" in spite'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Yesterday ... Worked at "Frederick".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Yesterday hard work on "Frederick"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'"Friedrich".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Past and Present
'Read part of Abbot Samson in evening. The pilgrimage to Rome!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'Yesterday a very happy Sunday, drawing a snailshell and with sweet evening home service and music, and reading Carlyle's "Teutsch Ritter".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'"Frederick" reading in evening at once encouraging and dismal in the extreme.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : French Revolution
'Reading death of Swiss (Carlyle "French Revolution") to girls (Clennie and Diddie).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : History of Friedrich II of Prussia OR Frederick the Great
'And I have just been reading poor Carlyle on last vol. of "Frederick".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'The programme devoted to Carlyle & his works was then proceeded with but owing to the length of the discussion was not completed. Mr Stansfield read a paper on Carlyle & his philosophy and Mrs Stansfield an extract from Sartor Resartus. Mr Rowntree gave a general resume of Sartor Resartus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
'The programme devoted to Carlyle & his works was then proceeded with but owing to the length of the discussion was not completed. Mr Stansfield read a paper on Carlyle & his philosophy and Mrs Stansfield an extract from Sartor Resartus. Mr Rowntree gave a general resume of Sartor Resartus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'The programme devoted to Carlyle & his works was then proceeded with but owing to the length of the discussion was not completed. Mr Stansfield read a paper on Carlyle & his philosophy and Mrs Stansfield an extract from Sartor Resartus. Mr Rowntree gave a general resume of Sartor Resartus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : State of German Literature
The whole three are sitting sewing in the most peaceful manner at my hand: our Mother has been reading the Man of Feeling and my last Paper (with great estimation) in the Edinburgh Review.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : Chartism
'I have been reading Carlyle, like all the rest of the world. He has been writing a sort of pamphlet on the state of England called ''Chartism.'' It is full of compassion and good feeling but utterly unreasonable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin
Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus
'This last week many little amenities have softened our lot; after a fornight's detention we had the good fortune to have our grand-motherly sergeant as chief of the guard. In our recent tour of the home counties under his superintendence we had established a certain authority over him by reason of his dependence upon us for remembering his documents, catching trains, and most principally, not losing ourselves! Thanks to this moral ascendancy, we were able to raid our kits and get almost anything we wanted — toilet things and books were the greatest desiderata — and since then I have been enjoying Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher. I hope to finish this and then do Sartor again, so as to take Browning's and Carlyle's philosophies of life with me to think over during the Scrubs [detention] months.'
