115 Facts About Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher.

Thomas Carlyle quit these and several other endeavours before settling on literature, writing for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia and working as a translator.

Thomas Carlyle found initial success as a disseminator of German literature, then little-known to English readers, through his translations, his Life of Friedrich Schiller, and his review essays for various journals.

Thomas Carlyle's first major work was a novel entitled Sartor Resartus.

Thomas Carlyle founded the London Library, contributed significantly to the creation of the National Portrait Galleries in London and Scotland, was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University in 1865, and received the Pour le Merite in 1874, among other honours.

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Thomas Carlyle's innovative writing style, known as Carlylese, greatly influenced Victorian literature and anticipated techniques of postmodern literature.

Thomas Carlyle preached "Natural Supernaturalism", the idea that all things are "Clothes" which at once reveal and conceal the divine, that "a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one", and that duty, work and silence are essential.

Thomas Carlyle postulated the Great Man theory, a philosophy of history which contends that history is shaped by exceptional individuals.

Thomas Carlyle viewed history as a "Prophetic Manuscript" that progresses on a cyclical basis, analogous to the phoenix and the seasons.

Thomas Carlyle occupied a central position in Victorian culture, being considered not only, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the "undoubted head of English letters", but a secular prophet.

Thomas Carlyle's reputation further declined in the 20th century, as the onsets of World War I and World War II brought forth accusations that he was a progenitor of both Prussianism and fascism.

Since the 1950s, extensive scholarship in the field of Thomas Carlyle Studies has improved his standing, and he is recognized as "one of the enduring monuments of our literature who, quite simply, cannot be spared.

Thomas Carlyle's parents were members of the Burgher secession Presbyterian church.

James Thomas Carlyle was a stonemason, later a farmer, who built the Arched House wherein his son was born.

Thomas Carlyle's maxim was that "man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream.

Thomas Carlyle married his first wife in 1791, distant cousin Janet, who gave birth to John Carlyle and then died.

Thomas Carlyle married Margaret Aitken in 1795, a poor farmer's daughter then working as a servant.

Thomas Carlyle's was close to her eldest son, being a "smoking companion, counselor and confidante" in Carlyle's early days.

Thomas Carlyle's suffered a manic episode when Carlyle was a teenager, in which she became "elated, disinhibited, over-talkative and violent.

Thomas Carlyle always spoke highly of his parents, and his character was deeply influenced by both of them.

Thomas Carlyle was severely bullied by his fellow students at Annan, until he "revolted against them, and gave stroke for stroke"; he remembered the first two years there as among the most miserable of his life.

Thomas Carlyle gravitated to mathematics and geometry and displayed great talent in those subjects, being credited with the invention of the Carlyle circle.

Thomas Carlyle gave his first trial sermons in December 1814 and December 1815, both of which are lost.

In May 1817, Thomas Carlyle abstained from enrollment in the theology course, news which his parents received with "magnanimity".

Thomas Carlyle enrolled in a mineralogy class from November 1818 to April 1819, attending lectures by Robert Jameson, and in January 1819 began to study German, desiring to read the mineralogical works of Abraham Gottlob Werner.

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In December 1819 and January 1820, Thomas Carlyle made his second attempt at publishing, writing a review-article on Marc-Auguste Pictet's review of Jean-Alfred Gautier's Essai historique sur le probleme des trois corps which went unpublished and is lost.

In January 1822, Thomas Carlyle wrote "Goethe's Faust" for the New Edinburgh Review, and shortly afterwards began a tutorship for the distinguished Buller family, tutoring Charles Buller and his brother Arthur William Buller until July; he would work for the family until July 1824.

Thomas Carlyle completed the Legendre translation in July 1822, having prefixed his own essay "On Proportion", which Augustus De Morgan later called "as good a substitute for the fifth Book of Euclid as could have been given in that space".

In May 1825, Thomas Carlyle moved into a cottage farmhouse in Hoddam Hill near Ecclefechan, which his father had leased for him.

Thomas Carlyle lived with his brother Alexander, who, "with a cheap little man-servant", worked the farm, his mother, with one maid-servant, and his two youngest sisters, Jean and Jenny.

Thomas Carlyle had constant contact with the rest of his family, most of whom lived close by at Mainhill, a farm owned by his father.

In Hoddam Hill, Thomas Carlyle found respite from the "intolerable fret, noise and confusion" that he had experienced in Edinburgh, and observed what he described as "the finest and vastest prospect all round it I ever saw from any house", with "all Cumberland as in amphitheatre unmatchable".

Thomas Carlyle achieved "a grand and ever-joyful victory", in the "final chaining down, and trampling home, 'for good, ' home into their caves forever, of all" his "Spiritual Dragons".

In that time, Thomas Carlyle published German Romance, began Wotton Reinfred, an autobiographical novel which he left unfinished, and published his first article for the Edinburgh Review, "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter".

In 1827 Thomas Carlyle attempted to land the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews without success, despite support from an array of prominent intellectuals, including Goethe.

Thomas Carlyle made an unsuccessful attempt for a professorship at the University of London.

Thomas Carlyle began but did not complete a history of German literature, from which he drew material for essays "The Nibelungen Lied", "Early German Literature" and parts of "Historic Survey of German Poetry".

Thomas Carlyle published early thoughts on the philosophy of history in "Thoughts on History" and wrote his first pieces of social criticism, "Signs of the Times" (1829) and "Characteristics" (1831).

That year, Thomas Carlyle wrote the essays "Goethe's Portrait", "Death of Goethe", "Goethe's Works", "Biography", "Boswell's Life of Johnson", and "Corn-Law Rhymes".

Thomas Carlyle became acquainted with scores of leading writers, novelists, artists, radicals, men of science, Church of England clergymen, and political figures.

Thomas Carlyle eventually decided to publish Sartor serially in Fraser's Magazine, with the installments appearing between November 1833 and August 1834.

In 1834, Thomas Carlyle applied unsuccessfully for the astronomy professorship at the Edinburgh observatory.

One evening in March 1835, Mill arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door appearing "unresponsive, pale, the very picture of despair".

Thomas Carlyle had come to tell Carlyle that the manuscript was destroyed.

Thomas Carlyle was sympathetic: "I can be angry with no one; for they that were concerned in it have a far deeper sorrow than mine: it is purely the hand of Providence".

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Thomas Carlyle presented his second lecture series in April and June 1838 on the history of literature at the Marylebone Institution in Portman Square.

Thomas Carlyle wrote to his brother John afterwards, "The Lecturing business went of [sic] with sufficient eclat; the Course was generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the bad best I have yet given.

Thomas Carlyle was the principal founder of the London Library in 1841.

Thomas Carlyle had chosen Oliver Cromwell as the subject for a book in 1840 and struggled to find what form it would take.

Thomas Carlyle declined an offer for professorship from St Andrews in 1844.

Financially secure, Thomas Carlyle wrote little in the years that immediately followed Cromwell.

Thomas Carlyle visited Ireland in 1846 with Charles Gavan Duffy for a companion and guide, and wrote a series of brief articles on the Irish question in 1848.

Thomas Carlyle visited Ireland again with Duffy later that year while recording his impressions in his letters and a series of memoranda, published as Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849 after his death; Duffy would publish his own memoir of their travels, Conversations with Carlyle.

In 1851, Thomas Carlyle wrote The Life of John Sterling as a corrective to Julius Hare's unsatisfactory 1848 biography.

In 1852, Thomas Carlyle began research on Frederick the Great, whom he had expressed interest in writing a biography of as early as 1830.

Thomas Carlyle traveled to Germany that year, examining source documents and prior histories.

Thomas Carlyle struggled through research and writing, telling von Ense it was "the poorest, most troublesome and arduous piece of work he has ever undertaken".

Thomas Carlyle made a second expedition to Germany in 1858 to survey the topography of battlefields, which he documented in Journey to Germany, Autumn 1858, published posthumously.

In May 1863, Thomas Carlyle wrote the short dialogue "Ilias in Nuce" (American Iliad in a Nutshell) on the topic of the American Civil War.

Thomas Carlyle planned to write four volumes but had written six by the time Frederick was finished in 1865.

Thomas Carlyle earned a sobriquet, the "Sage of Chelsea", and in the eyes of those that had rebuked his politics, it restored Carlyle to his position as a great man of letters.

Thomas Carlyle was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University in November 1865, succeeding William Ewart Gladstone and defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a vote of 657 to 310.

Thomas Carlyle traveled to Scotland to deliver his "Inaugural Address at Edinburgh" as Rector in April 1866.

Thomas Carlyle spoke extemporaneously on several subjects, concluding his address with the line: "Work, and despair not.

Thomas Carlyle experienced feelings of guilt as he read her complaints about her illnesses, his friendship with Lady Harriet Ashburton, and his devotion to his labour, particularly on Frederick the Great.

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Amidst controversy over governor John Eyre's violent repression of the Morant Bay rebellion, Thomas Carlyle assumed leadership of the Eyre Defence and Aid Fund in 1865 and 1866.

From December 1866 to March 1867, Thomas Carlyle resided at the home of Louisa Baring, Lady Ashburton in Menton, where he wrote reminiscences of Irving, Jeffrey, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth.

In 1868, he wrote reminiscences of John Wilson and William Hamilton, and his niece Mary Aitken Thomas Carlyle moved into 5 Cheyne Row, becoming his caretaker and assisting in the editing of Jane's letters.

Thomas Carlyle's conversation was recorded by a number of friends and visitors in later years, most notably William Allingham, who became known as Carlyle's Boswell.

Thomas Carlyle was laid to rest with his mother and father in Hoddam Kirkyard in Ecclefechan, according to old Scottish custom.

Thomas Carlyle rejected doctrines which profess to fully know the true nature of God, believing that to possess such knowledge is impossible.

Thomas Carlyle revered what he called the "Bible of Universal History", a "real Prophetic Manuscript" which incorporates the poetic and the factual to show the divine reality of existence.

Thomas Carlyle imaged the "burning of a World-Phoenix" to represent the cyclical nature of civilizations as they undergo death and "Palingenesia, or Newbirth".

Thomas Carlyle saw history since the Reformation as a process of decay culminating in the French Revolution, out of which renewal must come, "for lower than that savage Sansculottism men cannot go.

Thomas Carlyle saw individual actors as the prime movers of historical events: "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.

Thomas Carlyle perceived "a fatal discrepancy between our manner of observing [passing things], and their manner of occurring", since "History is the essence of innumerable Biographies" and every individual's experience varies, as does the "general inward condition of Life" throughout the ages.

Thomas Carlyle did not believe in hereditary monarchy but in a kingship based on merit; it was for this reason that he regarded the Reformation, the English Civil War and the French Revolution as triumphs of truth over falsehood, despite their undermining of necessary societal institutions.

Thomas Carlyle advocated a new kind of hero for the age of industrialisation: the Captain of Industry, who would re-imbue workhouses with dignity and honour.

Thomas Carlyle believed that his time required a new approach to writing:.

Thomas Carlyle's style lends itself to several nouns, the earliest being Carlylism from 1841.

At the beginning of his literary career, Thomas Carlyle worked to develop his own style, cultivating one of intense energy and visualisation, characterised not by "balance, gravity, and composure" but "imbalance, excess, and excitement.

Thomas Carlyle's writing in Sartor Resartus is described as "a distinctive mixture of exuberant poetic rhapsody, Germanic speculation, and biblical exhortation, which Thomas Carlyle used to celebrate the mystery of everyday existence and to depict a universe suffused with creative energy.

Declaiming the aimlessness and infirmity of English leadership, Thomas Carlyle made use of satirical characters like Sir Jabesh Windbag and Bobus of Houndsditch in Past and Present.

Thomas Carlyle transformed his depicted reality in various ways, whether by conversion of actual human beings into grotesque caricatures, envisioning apparently isolated facts as emblems of morality, or by manifestation of the supernatural; in the Pamphlets, pampered felons appear in nightmarish visions and wrongheaded philanthropists wallow in their own filth.

Thomas Carlyle could be a sharp-eyed, keen observer of the actual, reproducing scenes with imagistic clarity, as he does in the Reminiscences, the Life of John Sterling and the letters; he has often been called the Victorian Rembrandt.

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Thomas Carlyle initially attempted a fashionable irony in his writing, which he soon abandoned in favour of a "deeper spirit" of humour.

Linguistically, Thomas Carlyle explores the humorous possibilities of his subject through exaggerated and dazzling wordplay, "in sentences abounding with rhetorical devices: emphasis by capitalization, punctuation marks, and italics; allegory, symbol, and other poetic devices; hyphenated words, Germanic translations and etymologies; quotations, self-quotations, and bizarre allusions; and repetitious and antiquated speech.

Thomas Carlyle's letters are full of allusions to a wide range of Milton's texts, including Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, Samson Agonistes and, most frequently, Paradise Lost.

Thomas Carlyle was then fifty-four years old; tall, thin, but at that time upright, with no signs of the later stoop.

Thomas Carlyle's body was angular, his face beardless, such as it is represented in Woolner's medallion, which is by far the best likeness of him in the days of his strength.

Thomas Carlyle's head was extremely long, with the chin thrust forward; his neck was thin; the mouth firmly closed, the under lip slightly projecting; the hair grizzled and thick and bushy.

Higginson rather felt that Jean Paul's humorous character Siebenkas "came nearer to the actual Thomas Carlyle than most of the grave portraitures yet executed", for, like Siebenkas, Thomas Carlyle was "a satirical improvisatore".

Thomas Carlyle sent Carlyle one of his books in 1870 with the inscription, "To the General in Chief from his Lieutenant".

In 1854, Ruskin made his first public acknowledgement that Thomas Carlyle was the author to whom he "owed more than to any other living writer".

Authors on whom Thomas Carlyle's influence was particularly strong include Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arthur Hugh Clough, Dickens, Disraeli, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Frank Harris, Kingsley, George Henry Lewes, David Masson, George Meredith, Mill, Margaret Oliphant, Marcel Proust, Ruskin, George Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman.

Ralph Jessop has shown that Thomas Carlyle powerfully forwarded the Scottish School of Common Sense and reinforced it by way of further engagement with German idealism.

Thomas Carlyle influenced the Young Poland movement, particularly its main thought leaders Stanislaw Brzozowski and Antoni Lange.

In Romania, Titu Maiorescu of Junimea spread Thomas Carlyle's works, influencing Constantin Antoniade and others, including Panait Musoiu, Constantin Radulescu-Motru and Ion Th.

David R Sorensen affirms that Carlyle "redeemed the study of history at a moment when it was being threatened by a host of convergent forces, including religious dogmatism, relativism, utilitarianism, Saint-Simonianism and Comtism" by defending the "miraculous dimension of the past" from attempts to make "history a science of progress, philosophy a justification of self-interest, and faith a matter of social convenience.

Thomas Carlyle's histories were praised by Heinrich von Treitschke, Wilhelm Windelband, George Peabody Gooch, Pieter Geyl, Charles Firth, Nicolae Iorga, Vasile Parvan and Andrei Otetea.

Leopold Caro credited Thomas Carlyle with influencing the social altruism of Henry Ford.

Thomas Carlyle was admired by the Young Irelanders, despite his opposition to their cause.

Duffy wrote that in Thomas Carlyle, they found a "very welcome" teacher, who "confirmed their determination to think for themselves", and that his writings were "often a cordial to their hearts in doubt and difficulty".

Thomas Carlyle's philosophy was popular in the Antebellum South and eventual Confederacy.

References to Thomas Carlyle appear in the writings of Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi throughout his life.

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Thomas Carlyle's medievalist critique of industrial practice and political economy was an early utterance of what would become the spirit of both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts movement, and several leading members recognised his importance.

Thomas Carlyle used Carlyle as one of the models for the head of Christ in The Light of the World and showed great concern for Carlyle's portrayal in Ford Madox Brown's painting Work.

Almost overnight, it seemed, Thomas Carlyle plunged from his position as Sage of Chelsea and Grand Old Victorian to the object of puzzled dislike, or even of revulsion.

Tennyson observes that the effects of Froude's legacy are still felt in the way that Thomas Carlyle is read and perceived, as the controversy is better known than Thomas Carlyle's writings.

Thomas Carlyle "resembled most of his contemporaries" in his beliefs about Jews, identifying them with capitalist materialism and outmoded religious orthodoxy.

Thomas Carlyle had once considered writing a book called Exodus from Houndsditch, "a pealing off of fetid Jewhood in every sense from myself and my poor bewildered brethren".

Thomas Carlyle felt they had contributed nothing to the "wealth" of mankind, comparing "the Jews with their morbid imaginations and foolish sheepskin Targums" to "The Norse with their steel swords guided by fresh valiant hearts and clear veracious understanding".

Thomas Carlyle refused an invitation by Baron Rothschild in 1848 to support a Bill in Parliament to allow voting rights for Jews in the United Kingdom, asking Richard Monckton Milnes in a correspondence how a Jew could "try to be Senator, or even Citizen, of any Country, except his own wretched Palestine, " and expressed his hope that they would "arrive" in Palestine "as soon as possible".

Theodor Jost wrote in 1935: "Thomas Carlyle established, in fact, the mission of the Fuhrer historically and philosophically.

Standard edition of Thomas Carlyle's works is the Works in Thirty Volumes, known as the Centenary Edition.