Book Description
1897. Six lectures reported, with emendations and additions. Contents:Hero as Divinity (Odin; Paganism; Scandinavian mythology); Hero as Prophet (Mohammed; Islam); Hero as Poet (Dante; Shakespeare); Hero as Priest (Luther; Reformation, Knox; Puritanism); Hero as Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns); Hero as King (Cromwell, Napoleon; Modern Revolutionism).Download Description
Thoughts on the "Great Men" of history by the 19th centuries greatest historian ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Truly original
There are not many books sold at Amazon.com that were written almost two centuries ago. There might be a few written a few millenniums ago but they are mostly translations. There is something special when one reads the spoken word untranslated. Only in its original form, words have the mysterious effect that let the reader have a special connection with the author.

Carlyle was Scottish and lived in England, but he had close relations with the "New World" and had readers in United States. He had a lifelong friendship with an influential American Philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. At his time, there were not many philosophers who witnessed the industrial revolution but still kept a transcendental and not a materialistic view of the world. In the 19th century, Materialism was in full swing, and the people in the West were mesmerized by the scientific technological advances of the times and running away from God like herds of cattle, just like the way intellectuals of the East did a century later. Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau and a few others were the only exceptions in the West that still tried to keep what is beyond the "apparent" in focus or at least in search of it. Bediuzzaman tried to do the same with the voice of Qur'an and called the people to what is beyond the apparent in the face of materialism in the East in the 20th century. One interesting observation I have to point out, is that one common theme among these Western Philosophers; many were all influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, famous 18th century Swedish Philosopher

In Heroes and Hero Worship Thomas Carlyle makes an attempt to draw a picture of the development of human intellect by using historical people as coordinates. There are people who has a perspective of history in terms of "environment" and "times" and "causes" while others like Carlyle has the view that human advancement was not continues but discrete and these jumps were mainly due to specific individuals he calls "Heroes". This is like the wave - particle duality of the "nature of light".In some phenomenon Light behaves like a wave in others like a particle. One can write a history based on ideas, cultures and mediums in which people lived, or the same history could be written by taking certain individuals and following them and their actions.

Writings of many other authors of that time and Carlyle's of course are very perceptive. Carlyle does not really care to be objective on the matter. He has an idea and he wants to tell you that idea and when telling you what that idea is, he uses whatever his hands and mind get hold of. Being so passionate about what you are telling is probably a good thing. But if one overdoes it, one cannot help but show wild swings in appreciation of the historical person in question. If we use the drawing analogy, his historical person becomes no longer a point on the painting but a thread on the brush. But that should not prevent us from benefiting from his writings.

Muhammad (PBUH) has a special place in the book under the chapter title "Hero as a Prophet". In the book Carlyle declares his admiration of Muhammad (PBUH). Carlyle's answers to pointed questions on Islam and Muhammad (PBUH) showed interesting similarities to Bediuzzaman's line of answers to similar questions. ......

Considering the fact that while the West and East were at odds and the means of communications were quite inferior to our times, seeing Carlyle having such an open mind to the "other" puts him in a category of his own with others like Swedenborg, Emerson and Thoreau. I think when we are trying to build bridges between the peoples of the West and the East we should not overlook these early historical representatives of that dialogue, as Bediuzzaman foresees in his writings.

We can't do without Heroes
This is an extraordinary work, let modern liberal critics say what they will of their 'mass movements' and 'diversity'.Long after they and their productions have bitten the dust, Carlyle will continue to speak to the enlightened few, and perhaps one day, it is to be hoped, to the enlightened many.

This work is much more than just a study of various influential men in history.Carlyle has very interesting notions of the historical process itself, the spread of religions and their demise, the importance of "true belief" in things, as opposed the unbelief that merely follows rituals and procedures.For Carlyle, true belief, is the beginning of morality, all success, all good things in this world; Unbelief, scepticism, the beginning of all corruption, quackery, falsehood.Unbelief, for instance, is at the root of all materialist philosophies, eg Utilitarianism which find human beings to be nothing more thanclever, pleasure-seeking bipeds.It is also at the root of all democratic theories: faith in a democratic system means despair of finding an honest man to lead us.

Whether one agrees with Carlyle or not in his appraisal of democratic and other systems, one must admit, at least, that very little good is to be gotten from "the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries."If we have no honest men in government or in business, but only a bunch of self-interested quacks, then we cannot expect any system, however ingenious, to save us. Even the most skilled architect will not be able to construct a great building, if you give him only hollow, cracked bricks to build it with. Find your honest men, says Carlyle, and get them into the positions of influence; only then will it be well with you.

Praise for the individual
Six lectures delivered by Carlyle in 1840. He classifies six kinds of heroes: as Divinity (Wotan, paganism); Prophet (Mohamed); Poet (Dante, Shakespeare); Priest (Luther, Knox); Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns); and Ruler (Cromwell, Napoleon). The trait that defines a hero is: absolute sincerity and firm belief in his principles.

In his highly rhetorical lectures, Carlyle highlights and reinforces the role of the individual in the social process, as opposed to the role of the masses. And he did that precisely when the foundations were being laid for the most influential "pro-mass" movement in History: Marxism. The tragedy of Marxism, at least one of them all, is that, when translated into action, the blind masses were also led by "heroes" of the most authocratic sort.Not properly the work of an historian, these lectures are vivid, inflamed and enthusiast. Their uselfuness for our present age is precisely that they remind us of the crucial role significant individuals play in history, to accelerate or slow down (and even reverse) the process of social change, which is usually more gradual, diffused, and diverse.

Six vigorous meditations on the role of the hero in history.
Carlyle is not properly a historian or a philosopher, but a moralist, a fervent admirer of excellence, and a prose-poet of the first rank.Six meditations deal respectively of the hero as: Divinity, Prophet, Poet,Priest, Man of Letters, and King.If this book can't rightly be shelvedwith philosophy or history, it belongs in Literature with a capital"L," and Poetry.Carlylye loved the English Language and used itmasterfully, energetically, and reverentially, without a trace of thetrivial overindulgence of self-conscious and self-absorbed"poets." ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
Sartor Resartus is Thomas Carlyle's most enduring and influential work. First published in serial form in Fraser's Magazine in 1833-1834, it was discovered by the American Transcendentalists. Sponsored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was first printed as a book in Boston in 1836 and immediately became the inspiration for the Transcendental movement. The first London trade edition was published in 1838. By the 1840s, largely on the strength of Sartor Resartus, Carlyle became one of the leading literary figures in Britain.
Sartor Resartus became one of the important texts of nineteenth-century English literature, central to the Romantic movement and Victorian culture. At the time of Carlyle's death in 1881, more than 69,000 copies had been sold. The post-Victorian influence continued and extends to writers as diverse as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Willa Cather and Ernest Hemingway.
This edition of Sartor Resartus is the first publication of the work that uses all extant versions to create an accurate authorial text. This volume, the second in an eight-volume series, includes a complete textual apparatus as well as a historical introduction and full critical and explanatory annotation. ... Read more

Book Description
A stunning new joint biography from the acclaimed author of George Eliot.

The Carlyles lived at the heart of English life in mid-Victorian London, but both were outsiders, a Scottish pair who looked caustically at the society they so influenced -- Carlyle through his copious writings, and both through their network of acquaintances and correspondents. This is not only a portrait of a marriage but a picture of an age. It is elegant, erudite and entertaining. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

an excellent biography of a famously unhappy couple
As I expected from Ashton (having read her admirable biographies of George Eliot and G.H. Lewes), this is an excellent biography, thorough and well-researched.Ashton is sympathetic to both Carlyles, who had a famously unhappy marriage, yet objective, never taking sides; she understands Carlyle's tortured genius and neglect of his wife as well as Jane's self-pity and repressed talents and observantly shows how their difficult personalities interacted with each other as well as with their friends and family. ... Read more

Book Description
Don’t miss a single volume. Subscribe today!
Back volumes are available for purchase. To ensure that you don't miss a single issue, subscribe to The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle today. For more information, click here.

“One never tires of reading and rereading the correspondence of interesting people, and there is not doubt that the Carlyles were, and remain through their letters, one of the most interesting couples who ever lived. That their correspondence deserved to be preserved and printed was never in doubt; that is being brought out in so handsome an edition as that of the Duke-Edinburgh one is something that calls for celebration.”—Michael Timko, Books in Scotland ... Read more

Book Description
Don’t miss a single volume. Subscribe today!
Back volumes are available for purchase. To ensure that you don't miss a single issue, subscribe to The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle today. For more information, click here.

from reviews of the previous volumes:
“I have no doubt at all that this mammoth editorial task is very well worth doing, and it is being done extremely well. The Carlyles were extraordinary human beings and, as it happens, extraordinarily good letter-writers. Their letters give a uniquely valuable view not only of their life together, but also of the wider lives of all those, high and low, whom they attracted, repelled and—in the pages of their letters—impaled.”—Rosemary Ashton, London Review of Books

“These letters, new and old, reveal much about the lives, attitudes, and activities of the Carlyles, surely one of the most fascinating couples of the Victorian era.”—Joel J. Brattin, Nineteenth-Century Prose

“Such is the charm and intellectual vitality of both Carlyles that one can dip into the letters almost at random and still be captivated.”—Nineteenth-Century Literature

“So powerful were the Carlyles’ skills of letter-writing that they still evoke, clearly, a part of everyday life in Victorian England better than any history could; and lace it with gossip and human trivia that give the casual reader or the serious student of Carlyle
a truly three-dimensional picture of his and Jane’s life.”—Simon Heffer, The Spectator ... Read more

Book Description
Don’t miss a single volume. Subscribe today!
Back volumes are available for purchase. To ensure that you don't miss a single issue, subscribe to The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle today. For more information, click here.

from reviews of the previous volumes:
“I have no doubt at all that this mammoth editorial task is very well worth doing, and it is being done extremely well. The Carlyles were extraordinary human beings and, as it happens, extraordinarily good letter-writers. Their letters give a uniquely valuable view not only of their life together, but also of the wider lives of all those, high and low, whom they attracted, repelled and—in the pages of their letters—impaled.”—Rosemary Ashton, London Review of Books

“These letters, new and old, reveal much about the lives, attitudes, and activities of the Carlyles, surely one of the most fascinating couples of the Victorian era.”—Joel J. Brattin, Nineteenth-Century Prose

“Such is the charm and intellectual vitality of both Carlyles that one can dip into the letters almost at random and still be captivated.”—Nineteenth-Century Literature

“So powerful were the Carlyles’ skills of letter-writing that they still evoke, clearly, a part of everyday life in Victorian England better than any history could; and lace it with gossip and human trivia that give the casual reader or the serious student of Carlyle
a truly three-dimensional picture of his and Jane’s life.”—Simon Heffer, The Spectator ... Read more

Book Description
Don’t miss a single volume. Subscribe today!
Back volumes are available for purchase. To ensure that you don't miss a single issue, subscribe to The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle today. For more information, click here.

from reviews of the previous volumes:
“I have no doubt at all that this mammoth editorial task is very well worth doing, and it is being done extremely well. The Carlyles were extraordinary human beings and, as it happens, extraordinarily good letter-writers. Their letters give a uniquely valuable view not only of their life together, but also of the wider lives of all those, high and low, whom they attracted, repelled and—in the pages of their letters—impaled.”—Rosemary Ashton, London Review of Books

“These letters, new and old, reveal much about the lives, attitudes, and activities of the Carlyles, surely one of the most fascinating couples of the Victorian era.”—Joel J. Brattin, Nineteenth-Century Prose

“Such is the charm and intellectual vitality of both Carlyles that one can dip into the letters almost at random and still be captivated.”—Nineteenth-Century Literature

“So powerful were the Carlyles’ skills of letter-writing that they still evoke, clearly, a part of everyday life in Victorian England better than any history could; and lace it with gossip and human trivia that give the casual reader or the serious student of Carlyle
a truly three-dimensional picture of his and Jane’s life.”—Simon Heffer, The Spectator ... Read more