Synopsis
Volume 34 of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle covers the second half of 1858. Not unusually, the Carlyles were apart, writing to, and obsessively demanding letters from, each other. In July, Thomas was on holiday at his brother-in-law's farm the Gill, in Scotland, while Jane remained in Chelsea, training the new house-servant, Charlotte Southam. Jane soon trusted her implicitly and, given a new sense of freedom from the domestic responsibilities of Cheyne Row, began to make rather frequent day trips to Brighton, Portsmouth, and Alverstoke. On 21 August, Thomas set sail from Edinburgh for Germany to visit battlegrounds and other sites associated with the career of Frederick the Great, eager to finish the third volume of the biography. With Thomas on the continent, Jane visited Scotland and made the rounds of kith and kin until the end of September. This volume is a comedy of nervous travel adventure: a lost and found passport, a lost and found ring, the "greasy tepid cooking" and "praeternatural beds" of Germany, and the usual Carlyle physical and mental maladies. From a newly found cache of letters to the Wall Street broker Charles Butler, we find that Thomas, never one to miss an opportunity to lambaste the Americans and "Yankeedom," in fact held significant investments in American railroads.
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Review
"[N]otable not only for its editorial thoroughness but also for offering hitherto unpublished material."
--Susan Morgan, "Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900"
"[A] scrupulously edited, monumental edition. . . . Neurotic, complaining, self-absorbed and repetitive both Carlyles may be in their letters, but they are a pair entirely "sui generis," both in their way endowed with genius, and no better observers existed of Victorian London life, from that of the richest aristocrats to that of the poorest foreign refugees."
--Rosemary Ashton, "Times Literary Supplement"
About the Author
Michael K. Goldberg is Professor of English, University of British Columbia. He has written widely on the 19th century including "Carlyle and Dickens" (Georgia, 1972). Joel J. Brattin is Assistant Professor in the Humanities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Mark Engel is a student of philosophy, a professional editor, and an independent scholar.
Campbell is Director-General of The Institute of Export.
Sorensen is Associate Professor of English at St. Joseph's University.
Fielding is George Saintsbury Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.
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