 Title page of the first English edition | |
| Author | Thomas Carlyle |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Oliver Cromwell |
| Published | 1845 |
| Publisher | Chapman and Hall |
| Publication place | England |
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It "remains one of the most important works of British history published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." [1]
Carlyle was attracted to Cromwell due to their shared Protestant upbringing and biblical rhetorical style, as well as Cromwell's "sense of the divine vitality of the universe, his hostility to democracy, and his belief that heroes can be the agents of God's will." [2]
Carlyle began writing with Cromwell in mind in 1840 but he did not settle on Cromwell's letters and speeches as the focus of a book until late 1843. [3] His first definitive statement that he would collect the letters and speeches comes in a letter to Edward FitzGerald dated 9 January 1844 wherein he proposed "the gathering of all Oliver's Letters and Speeches, and stringing them together according to the order of time." [4]
Carlyle was contemplating a biography of Cromwell when he concluded his initial work in October 1844 writing to FitzGerald on 8 February 1845 that "The Life must follow when it can." [5] During the spring and summer of 1845 Carlyle added many annotations full of commentary and narrative to the gathering, which in effect became the biography that he wanted to write. [2]
The publication of the first edition helped turn up a large number of additional letters which Carlyle incorporated into a second edition published in June 1846. More letters accompanied the third edition of November 1849. [2]
William Squire, a "practiced hoaxer", forwarded thirty five letters to Carlyle, alleged to have been written by Cromwell to Samuel Squire, a cornet and auditor in Cromwell's army who in fact did not exist. William Squire had written the letters himself. Believing them to be genuine, Carlyle published them in the December 1847 issue of Fraser's Magazine . Their authenticity was quickly questioned by critics, such as John Bruce of the Camden Society, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Babington Macaulay and Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward. Carlyle included the letters in the third edition on the advice of John Forster and Edward FitzGerald, despite the addition of a headnote to the appendix stating that they were "semi-romantic or Doubtful Documents of Oliver's History". In 1885, Samuel Rawson Gardiner discovered evidence which contradicted assertions contained in the Squire papers, though William Aldis Wright still defended them as authentic. Finally, Walter Rye unearthed Squire's history of hoaxing, confirming that the letters were forgeries. [6]
James Anthony Froude called it the nineteenth century's "most important contribution to English history," explaining that "with the clear sight of Oliver himself, we have a new conception of the Civil War and of its consequences." [7] George Peabody Gooch wrote that "it was the proudest achievement of [Carlyle's] life to restore to England one of her greatest sons ... the 'Cromwelliad' remains a marvellous production." [8] Wilbur Cortez Abbott called it "the greatest literary monument to the Protector's memory." [9]
The book influenced the Transcendentalists and permeated popular American culture. Joel T. Headley's biography of Cromwell "recycled Carlyle for the masses," thereby influencing John Brown, who modelled himself after Cromwell as described by Headley. [10]
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.
In the 19th century, a captain of industry was a business leader whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributed positively to the country in some way. This may have been through increased productivity, expansion of markets, providing more jobs, or acts of philanthropy. This characterization contrasts with that of the robber baron, a business leader using political means to achieve personal ends.
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.
Natural Supernaturalism is one of Thomas Carlyle's philosophical concepts. It derives from the name of a chapter in his novel Sartor Resartus (1833–34) in which it is a central tenet of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh's "Philosophy of Clothes". Natural Supernaturalism holds that "existence itself is miraculous, that life contains elements of wonder that can never be defined or eradicated by physical science."
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.
The French Revolution: A History was written by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. The three-volume work, first published in 1837, charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to the height of the Reign of Terror (1793–94) and culminates in 1795. A massive undertaking which draws together a wide variety of sources, Carlyle's history—despite the unusual style in which it is written—is considered to be an authoritative account of the early course of the Revolution.
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.
The Condition-of-England question was a debate in the Victorian era over the issue of the English working class during the Industrial Revolution. It was first proposed by Thomas Carlyle in his essay Chartism (1839). After assessing Chartism as "the bitter discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition therefore or the wrong disposition, of the Working Classes of England", Carlyle proceeds to ask:
What means this bitter discontent of the Working Classes? Whence comes it, whither goes it? Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably consent to depart from us and die into rest? These are questions.
Jane Baillie Carlyle was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle.
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.
Vasily Petrovich Botkin was a Russian essayist, literary, art and music critic, translator and publicist.
John Reuben Thompson was an American poet, journalist, editor and publisher.
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 house, Comely Bank is a Category B listed building in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was once the home of Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. He lived there with his wife Jane Carlyle from October 1826, the time of their marriage, to May 1828, when they moved to Craigenputtock.
Scotsbrig is a farm near Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, and a Category B listed building. Thomas Carlyle lived there with his family in the summer of 1826 before moving to 21 Comely Bank, Edinburgh. Scotsbrig remained a residence of the Carlyle family for decades. The farmhouse underwent numerous additions and renovations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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.
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