Red cloth binding with gilt title on the spine. Black title on the front board. Dimensions are for one volume.

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Hardcover. Condition: Good. Edmund. J. Sullivan (illustrator). Tremendous, illustrated edition of Carlyle’s authoritative and influential history of the French Revolution (1837). With numerous b/w drawings by E. J. Sullivan featuring sketches of various figures within the text plus striking plates with figurative depictions of scenes or themes done in the artist’s famed grotesque, dramatic style that mirrors Carlyle’s own unorthodox style. Contents; Vol 1: “The Bastille”, “The constitution” ; vol 2: “The guillotine”. Subjects; France History Revolution, (1789-1799). France History Louis XVI, (1774-1793).

Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. Known as the Sage of Chelsea, he became “the undoubted head of English letters” in the 19th century.

The son of a stonemason, Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, where he attended the village school, Annan Academy, and finally the University of Edinburgh. Graduating with distinction in 1813, he prepared to become a minister in the United Secession Church while working as a schoolmaster, first in Annan and then in Kirkcaldy, teaching mathematics. He eventually lost his religious faith, abandoned the ministry, and resigned from his post in 1818, briefly enrolling as a law student before working as a tutor. In 1819, during a bleak period of his life, Carlyle’s discovery of German literature rekindled his belief in God and provided the catalyst for much of his early literary career as an essayist and translator. He contributed articles to the Edinburgh Encyclopedia and various periodicals, translated German authors, and established a modest reputation. His first major work, a novel entitled Sartor Resartus (1831) inspired by his own experience, went largely unnoticed. After relocating to London, he wrote The French Revolution: A History (1837) and became prominent. Each of his subsequent works, from On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841) to History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (1858–1865) and beyond, were read widely throughout Europe and North America.

Carlyle’s works amount to thirty volumes, most of which are in the genres of history and the critical essay. His distinctive style, called Carlylese, is rich in vocabulary, humour and allusion; his writing has been described as proto-postmodern. His early essays and translations almost single-handedly introduced German Romanticism to the English-speaking world. His histories drew lessons from the past in order to impart wisdom on the present, using contrast to raise questions and provide answers. He championed the Captain of Industry and such figures as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great, writing that “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” He was a staunch critic of democracy, utilitarianism and laissez-faire, referring to economics as “the dismal science“.

Carlyle has often been hailed as a prophet. Immensely influential, his work shaped such varied areas of thought as Romanticism, transcendentalism, medievalism, socialism, Irish rebellion, Southern secession, aestheticism and the Arts and Crafts movement. After occupying a central position in Victorian intellectual life, his reputation fluctuated in the 20th century, depreciating during the Edwardian era, reviving in the interwar period, and withering in the years that followed the Second World War, when he came to be perceived as a progenitor of fascism. Since the 1960s, the field of Carlyle Studies has served to improve his standing, with the publication of numerous monographs, academic journals, and critical editions of his work.