Carlyle, Thomas 1795-1881
Scottish historian and essayist

Born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, the son of a stonemason, he was educated at Edinburgh University, studying arts and mathematics, and then became a teacher. Returning to Edinburgh in 1818 to study law, he wrote several articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and immersed himself in the study of German literature, publishing a translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, in 1824 which brought him entry into literary London. He married Jane Baillie Welsh (Jane Carlyle) in 1826, and from 1828 they lived on her estate of Craigenputtock, near Dumfries. There Carlyle wrote his first major work on social philosophy, Sartor Resartus, which was published in instalments in Fraser's Magazine (1833-34) and as a book in the USA (1836), with an introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was partly a satirical discourse on the value of clothes, and partly a semi-autobiographical discussion of creeds and human values. In 1834 the couple moved to Chelsea, London, where Carlyle spent the rest of his life. Here he completed his romantic history of The French Revolution (3 vols, 1837), despite the accidental burning of the manuscript of most of the first volume by John Stuart Mill's maidservant. He also wrote numerous essays and pamphlets which highlight his increasingly right-wing political attitudes, and his six-volume work History of? Frederick the Great (1858-65), a compelling portrait of the practical autocrat as a heroic idealist. His Reminiscences were published in 1881.

Bibliography: J A Froude, Thomas Carlyle: a history of his life (1884)