The Carlyles at Home and Abroad

Contemporary Review, April, 2005

The Carlyles at Home and Abroad. David R. Sorensen and Rodger L. Tarr, editors. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]47.50. xiii 255 pages. ISBN 0-7546-0387-3. This collection of twenty-one essays by Carlyle scholars in Britain, the U.S. and France aims to trace the influence of the Carlyles not only in the British Isles but in the U.S.

and Europe. The range of topics is prodigious: Carlyle after Jane's death; Carlyle and Frederick the Great; Carlyle and 'the "Insane" Fine Arts'; Carlyle, Herzen and the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848; Carlyle, Young Ireland and the 'legacy of millennialism'; a French view of Carlyle's French Revolution; 'vision and truth in Carlyle's early histories; Carlyle and Coleridge; Carlyle and symbolism; Carlyle's influence on Mark Twain; Carlyle and Henry James; race in Past and Present; Carlyle and 'The Nigger Question'; the Carlyles and the Ashburtons; Carlyle's use of German literature in his courtship of Jane; Geraldine Jewsbury as Carlyle's best friend; Jane Carlyle and the 'psycho-feminist myth'; Jane Carlyle's travel narratives; the role of Rousseau in the Carlyles' intellectual life; Jane Carlyle's unpublished writings; Carlyle's revisions of his works for republication. The range is indeed very wide and all students of Carlyle's writings and of Jane's marvellous letters will be grateful for the new insights given here. (A.C.)