Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a Scottish historian, essayist and social critic, the son of a stonemason in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, educated at Edinburgh for a ministry he abandoned. He introduced German literature to Britain through translations of Goethe and essays on Schiller, and in Sartor Resartus invented a comic philosophical style all his own. The French Revolution, published in 1837 after the only manuscript of its first volume was accidentally burned, made him famous; On Heroes and Hero-Worship, Past and Present, Latter-Day Pamphlets and a six-volume Frederick the Great followed. From his house in Chelsea he was for forty years the sage of Victorian England, admired and increasingly disputed.