Carlyle’s Hard Work

World famous historian, essayist and thinker Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was born in Scotland, for a time Carlyle taught and contributed to the Edinburgh Review. His Life of Schiller, first printed in serial form in 1823-4, won critical acclaim, but it was the publication in 1837 of The French Revolution which established his literary reputation. In it he expressed the view, to be repeated in his later works, that great men shape the course of history.

The manuscript of Carlyle’s first volume of The French Revolution was mistakenly burnt by a servant. It took him two years to rewrite.