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Thomas
Carlyle, the son of a stonemason, was born in Ecclefechan in
Scotland, in 1795. Brought up as a strict Calvinist, he was
educated at
the village school, Annan Academy and Edinburgh University, where
he
studied arts and mathematics. After graduating in 1813 he
became a
teacher at Kirkcaldy.
Carlyle moved to Edinburgh in 1818 where he was commissioned to
write
several articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia and for the
Edinburgh
Review. Carlyle also began translating German writers
such as Goethe and Schiller and writing original work such as The
Life of Schiller (1825).
After marrying Jane Baillie Welsh in 1826, Carlyle moved to London
where he became a close friend of the philosopher, John Stuart
Mill. As
well as contributing articles for Mill's Westminster Review,
"Sartor
Resartus" appeared in Fraser's Magazine (1833-34).
Carlyle also published several books including The French
Revolution (1837), On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic
in History (1841) and Past and Present (1843).
Carlyle's books and articles inspired social reformers such as
John
Ruskin, Charles Dickens, John Burns, Tom Mann and William Morris.
However, although he had originally held progressive political
views,
Carlyle became increasingly conservative in the late 1840s.
This is
reflected in the right-wing, anti-democratic attitudes expressed
in his
collected essays Latter Day Pamphlets (1850) and his
admiration for
strong leaders illustrated by his six-volume History of
Frederick the
Great (1858-1865) and The Early Kings of Norway
(1875). In the last few years of his life, Carlyle's writing
was confined to letters to The
Times. Thomas Carlyle died in 1881. |
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The person who cannot wonder is
but
a pair of
spectacles behind
which there is no eye.
Thomas Carlyle
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