Background
Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4, 1795, in Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, United Kingdom. His father, a stonemason, was an intelligent man and a pious Calvinist.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1461064619/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1483981061/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1496183762/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140430652/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199540373/?tag=2022091-20
essayist historian teacher writer
Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4, 1795, in Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, United Kingdom. His father, a stonemason, was an intelligent man and a pious Calvinist.
Carlyle was educated at Annan Grammar School. In 1809 he entered Edinburgh University, where he read voraciously and distinguished himself in mathematics.
After taking a degree in mathematics he taught for the next several years, from 1814 to 1818, first at Annan Academy and then at Kirkcaldy.
In 1824 he published a life of Schiller and translations of Adrien Legendre's Geometry and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. It was during this period that he wrote a series of essays for the Edinburgh Review and the Foreign Review which were later grouped as Miscellaneous and Critical Essays. Among these were essays on Burns, Goethe, and Richter and the important "Signs of the Times," his first essay on contemporary social problems. Sartor Resartus was the first work by Carlyle to gain much notice. The first appearance of Sartor Resartus was greeted with "universal disapprobation," in part because of its wild, grotesque, and rambling mixture of serious and comic styles. This picturesque and knotted prose was to become Carlyle's hallmark. It was published in Fraser's Magazine in 1833 and 1834 and as a book in America in 1836 and in London in 1837.
Thomas turned to a study of the French Revolution in Chartism (1839), he urged the aristocrats to profit by the lessons of the French Revolution and to give the masses the wise leadership that was needed to restore prosperity and tranquility. He enlarged upon this theme of leadership in On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), where he attempted to show that leadership should rest in the hands of heroes who are leaders by virtue of superior spiritual insight. To this theme, by now an obsession with him, he returned in 1843 in Past and Present.
And from 1852 to 1865 he labored on a biography of Frederick the Great (1865) against the mounting uncongeniality and intractability of the subject. During these years Carlyle exerted a great influence on younger contemporaries such as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley, John Ruskin, and James Froude. In 1865 Carlyle was elected lord rector of Edinburgh University.
Carlyle died without issue on February 4, 1881, in London.
Thomas Carlyle was one the most important social commentators of his time, coined the term "the dismal science" for economics and wrote several articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Carlyle's collected works comprises of 30 volumes. He is the author of such famous works as: The French Revolution, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.
In mathematics, he was known for the Carlyle circle (this method used in quadratic equations and for developing ruler-and-compass constructions of regular polygons).
Once a Christian, Carlyle lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, later adopting a form of deism.
The underlying ideas of hero worship as developed by Carlyle are the following: all history is the record of great men; admiration of great men is deep-seated in mankind; this admiration, which is hero worship, is the basis of society, the influence vivifying man and the foundation of religion.
He preached against materialism and mechanism during the industrial revolution.
He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1878.
Thomas was too shy and proud to see many of the Annan people, and found his chief solace in reading such books as he could get. He was respected for his integrity and independence, and a stern outside covered warm affections.
Thomas married to Jane Welsh in 1826. Their marriage proved to be one of the most famous, well documented, and unhappy of literary unions.
