Sartor Resartus - Background

Background

Archibald MacMechan surmised that the novel's invention had three literary sources. The first being The Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift, whom Carlyle intensely admired in his college years, even going by the nicknames "Jonathan" and "The Dean". In that work, the three main traditions of Christianity are represented by a father bestowing his three children with clothes they may never alter, but proceed to do so according to fashion. The second being Carlyle's work translating Goethe, particularly Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Faust, both of which are quoted and explicitly referred to, especially in Teufelsdröckh's crisis being named "The Sorrows of Young Teufelsdröckh". The third being Tristram Shandy from which Carlyle quotes many phrases, and he referred to earlier in his letters.

Carlyle worked on an earlier novel, Wotton Reinfred which Macmechan refers to as "The first draft of Sartor". Carlyle finished seven chapters of the semi-autobiographical novel depicting a young man of deeply religious upbringing being scorned in love, and thereafter wandering. He eventually finds at least philosophical consolation in an mysterious stranger named Maurice Herbert who invites Wotton into his home and frequently discusses with him speculative philosophy. At this point the novel abruptly shifts to highly philosophical dialogue revolving mostly around Kant. Though the unfinished novel deeply impressed Carlyle's wife Jane, Carlyle never published it and its existence was forgotten until long after Carlyle's death. Macmechan suggests that the novel provoked Carlyle's frustration and scorn due to his "zeal for truth and his hatred for fiction" spoken of in his letters of the time. Numerous part of Wotton appear in the biographical section of Sartor Resartus, in which Carlyle humorously sentences them to the bags containing Teufelsdröckh's autobiographical sketches, which the editor constantly complains about being overly fragmented or derivative of Goethe. Though widely and erroneously reported as having been burned by Carlyle, the unfinished novel is still extant in draft form, several passages being moved verbatim to Sartor Resartus but with their context radically changed.

Carlyle had difficulty finding a publisher for the novel and began composing it as an article in October 1831 at Craigenputtock. Fraser's Magazine serialised it in 1833-1834. The text would first appear in volume form in Boston in 1836, its publication arranged by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who much admired the book and Carlyle. Emerson's savvy dealing with the overseas publishers would ensure Carlyle received high compensation that the novel did not attain in Britain. The first British edition would appear much later, in London in 1838.