 Title page of the first English edition | |
| Author | Thomas Carlyle |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Frederick the Great |
| Published | 1858–1865 |
| Publisher | Chapman and Hall |
History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great is a biography of Friedrich II of Prussia by Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was first published in six volumes from 1858 to 1865.
Carlyle's interest in Frederick began when he read a history of him in 1819 and became fond of quoting his saying "Another time we will do better." [1] [2] He first expressed his desire to write about Frederick in a letter addressed to G. R. Gleig dated 21 May 1830, wherein he made the following (unsuccessful) proposal:
Frederick the Great, as an Author, Soldier, King and Man, well deserves to have his History written; better perhaps than Charles XII, whose Biography by Voltaire has always seemed to me one of the most delightful Books. Let your Publishers offer me Three hundred pounds, and time to heat the historico-biographical crucible and fill it and fuse it properly, and I will give them the best single Volume I can on the brave Fritz: I think it might be ready before this time twelvemonth; and very probably I might go to Germany in winter to inquire into it better.
This is the most eligible enterprise I can think of at present: if you can arrange your side of it on these terms, I shall be very happy to hear so, as soon as possible, and proceed forthwith to take measures for performing mine. I do believe, a rather good Book might be written on the subject; at all events, I am willing to try. [3]
His interest did not abate. In Sartor Resartus , which he wrote that year, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh's father is a retired sergeant in Frederick's army. Carlyle asked Karl August Varnhagen von Ense in 1840, "Did anyone ever write an adequate Life of your Frederick the Great?" [4] He began reading a new biography of Frederick by Johann Preuss in 1845, shortly after he had completed the manuscript of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches . [5] The biography prompted him to declare, "Certainly if there is a Hero for an Epic in these Ages—and why should there not in these ages as well as others,—then this is he!" [6] He began research for his work in 1851, after the completion of Latter-Day Pamphlets and The Life of John Sterling , touring Germany in the autumn of 1852. Progress was slow at first, as Carlyle harboured doubts about his subject and his ability to complete the task he had set for himself, as well as finding difficulty in accessing source materials. Nonetheless, he persisted, writing copious notes, a large collection of which are now in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Various assistants helped with his research, making trips to the British Library and State Paper Office among other collections, also copying extracts from German histories. Carlyle purchased many books on German history, a significant number of which he left to Harvard University in his will; they are now housed in the Houghton Library. In 1854, Carlyle had a soundproof room built in the top story of his house on Cheyne Row in order to block the noise from his neighbours and the street. He wrote the remainder of Frederick there.
He completed the first two volumes in 1856 and they were published in 1858. A wearied Carlyle lamented that it "seems worth nothing to me, or less than nothing"; Varnhagen von Ense relates, "Carlyle says that his book on Frederick the Great is the poorest, most troublesome and arduous piece of work he has ever undertaken: no satisfaction in it at all, only labour and sorrow. 'What the devil had I to do with your Friedrich?'" [7] Positive reception of the first two volumes encouraged him, [8] and he made a second trip to Germany, "a visit made primarily to study twelve of the battlefields of Frederick the Great in Silesia, Bohemia, and Saxony," which he documented in Journey to Germany, Autumn 1858. [9]
Originally planning to write four volumes, Carlyle realized that he would need six, as the first two only took the history to 1740 and the death of Frederick's father Frederick William I. After the 1858 journey he expressed hope that the book would be finished in two years, but it ended up taking seven. The third volume appeared in 1862, the fourth in 1864, and the last two in 1865. Carlyle was seventy years old the year the last volume was published (he turned 70 on 4 December 1865) and had acquired a tremor in his writing hand. [10]
James Anthony Froude called it "the grandest of his works". [11] Ralph Waldo Emerson considered it "a book that is a Judgment Day, for its moral verdict on men and nations, and the manners of modern times." [11] He also called it "Infinitely the wittiest book that was ever written." [12] James Russell Lowell wrote that "The figures of most historians seem like dolls stuffed with bran, whose whole substance runs out through any hole that criticism may tear in them; but Carlyle's are so real in comparison, that, if you prick them, they bleed." [12]
William Allingham left his impressions:
Suppose you care little or nothing at all for the King of Prussia and his concerns,—if you care for Literature and for Genius, here is a supreme work of Literary Genius, here is the best that a truly Great Man of the literary sort found himself able to give you by the conscientious devotion of thirteen laborious years; here is spread out legibly before you a world of wit, humour, picture, narrative, character, history, thought, wisdom, shrewdness, learning, insight. Open it where you will, the page is alive. [13]
Theodore Roosevelt included it in his list of recommended books, specifically the battle scenes, which he "not only read through, but have read . . . again and again". [14] Lytton Strachey called it "masterly". [15] H. L. Mencken compared it to the Parthenon, Beethoven's Fifth, and Wiener Blut. [16]
Froude noted that military students of the time learned Frederick's battles from Carlyle's accounts. [17]
Frederick the Great was translated into German from 1858 to 1869, almost immediately as it was being published in English. [18] Otto von Bismarck wrote to Carlyle that he had "placed before the Germans our great Prussian King in his full figure, like a living statue." [19] The work appears frequently in Cosima Wagner's diaries; Richard Wagner quoted from it in the 1872 introduction to his essay "Art and Revolution". [20]
Joseph Goebbels read the book avidly, and is recorded as having read passages from it to Adolf Hitler on two occasions in the early months of 1945, as defeat loomed. Goebbels told Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk that after the second reading a few days before the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April, "The Führer . . . had tears in his eyes." [21]
This episode severely damaged the book's reputation in the post-war period, a state of affairs that continues today. Jonathan McCollum wrote in 2007 that "Carlyle's Frederick has never really been extricated from Hitler's bunker." [22]
The work is made up of 21 books and an appendix.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy.
James Anthony Froude was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel The Nemesis of Faith, drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best-known historians of his time for his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
William Allingham was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem "The Faeries" was much anthologised. But he is better known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known watercolourist and illustrator.
The Silesian Wars were three wars fought in the mid-18th century between Prussia and Habsburg Austria for control of the Central European region of Silesia. The First (1740–1742) and Second (1744–1745) Silesian Wars formed parts of the wider War of the Austrian Succession, in which Prussia was a member of a coalition seeking territorial gain at Austria's expense. The Third Silesian War (1756–1763) was a theatre of the global Seven Years' War, in which Austria in turn led a coalition of powers aiming to seize Prussian territory.
Carlyle's House, in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, central London, was the home of the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane from 1834 until his death. The home of these writers was purchased by public subscription and placed in the care of the Carlyle's House Memorial Trust in 1895. They opened the house to the public and maintained it until 1936, when control of the property was assumed by the National Trust, inspired by co-founder Octavia Hill's earlier pledge of support for the house. It became a Grade II listed building in 1954 and is open to the public as a historic house museum.
Latter-Day Pamphlets was a series of "pamphlets" published by Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle in 1850, in vehement denunciation of what he believed to be the political, social, and religious imbecilities and injustices of the period.
Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain was the name given by John Ruskin to a series of letters addressed to British workmen during the 1870s. They were published in the form of pamphlets. The letters formed part of Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social issues of the day on the model of his mentor Thomas Carlyle.
Past and Present is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle's fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks' reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day.
Jane Baillie Carlyle was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle.
Johann August Eduard Mandel (1810-1882) was a German engraver.
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, published by James Fraser, London, in 1841. It is a collection of six lectures given in May 1840 about prominent historical figures. It lays out Carlyle's belief in the importance of heroic leadership.
Essays: First Series is a series of essays written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in 1841, concerning transcendentalism.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays is the title of a collection of reprinted reviews and other magazine pieces by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Along with Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution it was one of the books that made his name. Its subject matter ranges from literary criticism to biography, history and social commentary. These essays have been described as "Intriguing in their own right as specimens of graphic and original nonfiction prose…indispensable for understanding the development of Carlyle's mind and literary career", and the scholar Angus Ross has noted that the review-form displays in the highest degree Carlyle's "discursiveness, allusiveness, argumentativeness, and his sense of playing the prophet's part."
Aileen Christianson was Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She was well known as a scholar of Scottish literature and women's writing, and as senior editor of 'The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle' and of collections of Scottish women's writing. Her experience over decades made her a recognised authority on both Carlyles. She gained an MA (hons.) in English and History from the University of Aberdeen in 1966.
Reminiscences is a book by historian and social critic Thomas Carlyle, posthumously published in 1881, which contains two lengthy memoirs of the author's wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, and friend Edward Irving, together with shorter essays on his father and some of the literary friends of his youth. The book's emphasis primarily rests on Carlyle's relationship with the subjects. The book was begun in 1832 but mainly written in the year following Jane Carlyle's death, in April 1866. Many of its first readers were shocked by the impression it gave of a harsh, gloomy, censorious personality and of a man racked by remorse over his failings as a husband; it did Carlyle's reputation as the sage and prophet of the Victorian era lasting harm. Nevertheless, it is characterized by great vividness and accuracy of detail, and by a comparatively direct, conversational style, and has been called an autobiographical masterpiece.
The Carlyle–Emerson correspondence is a series of letters written between Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) from 14 May 1834 to 20 June 1873. It has been called "one of the classic documents of nineteenth-century literature."
Thomas Carlyle's religious, historical and political thought has long been the subject of debate. In the 19th century, he was "an enigma" according to Ian Campbell in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, being "variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian." Carlyle continues to perplex scholars in the 21st century, as Kenneth J. Fielding quipped in 2005: "A problem in writing about Carlyle and his beliefs is that people think that they know what they are."
Thomas Carlyle believed that his time required a new approach to writing:
But finally do you reckon this really a time for Purism of Style; or that Style has much to do with the worth or unworth of a Book? I do not: with whole ragged battalions of Scott's-Novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French and even Newspaper Cockney storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian English breaking up from its foundations,—revolution there as visible as anywhere else!
Thomas Carlyle published numerous works, and many more have been written about him by other authors.
Project Gutenberg: Contents; Volumes I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI; Appendix
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