The most important writings by the great and controversial Victorian polemicist.
Carlyle was one of the great figures of his age: thunderous, passionate, irascible, sceptical and idealistic. This selection is representative of all stages of Carlyle''s career, and includes ''Sign of the Times'', his essay against the mechanization of the age and the rise of the machines; the whole of ''Chartism''; and extracts from The French Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, as well as other pieces. The book also includes an introduction and notes by Alan Shelston.
Thomas Carlyle was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1795. Intended by his family to become a Presbyterian minister, he was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment while at the University of Edinburgh and became a teacher instead. He later turned to literary work, publishing a life of Schiller and translations of Goethe in the 1820s. His first truly
