Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.
Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected to become a preacher by his parents, but while at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. His combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity, made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order. He brought a trenchant style to his social and political criticism and a complex literary style to works such as The French Revolution: A History (1837). Dickens used Carlyle's work as a primary source for the events of the French Revolution in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.
Read more about Thomas Carlyle: Early Life and Influences, Private Life, Influence, Works, Definitions
Famous quotes containing the words thomas carlyle, thomas and/or carlyle:
“For, if a “good speaker,” never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that ... is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“I could not help but say that Mr. Carlyle seemed the only virtuous philosopher we had. Upon which his wife answered, “My dear, if Mr. Carlyle’s digestion had been stronger, there is no saying what he might have been!””
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897)