The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, originally published in 1837, opens with the death of Louis XV in 1774 and ends in 1795 when Bonaparte quelled the insurrection of the Vendemiaire. It covers the reign of Louis XVI, a period that included the assembly of the States General, the fall of the Bastille, the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, the flight of the king to Varennes, the Convention, the trial and execution of the king and queen, the reign of terror and the fall of Robespierre. The study established Carlyle's reputation and contains portraits of Mirabeau, Lafayette, Danton and Robespierre. This edition reproduces the two-volume text of 1857 and includes a new chronology of events of the Revolution and a full index, as well as informative notes.
Thomas Carlyle was born in Dumfriesshire in 1795 and educated at Edinburgh University. He began training for ministry but turned instead to teaching, law study, and increasingly literary work and studying German literature. His first considerable essay was published in 1822. He continued to write on and translate German literature during the following six years, and published a novel, Sartor Resartus, in 1833-4. In 1831 Carlyle met J. S. Mill, who introduced him to Emerson and interested him in the French Revolution, leading to his history of it, completed in 1837. From 1837 to 1840 he undertook several important lecture series, in which he developed his individualist desire to place a satisfactory model of the hero before his contemporaries. His reputation was firmly established by the mid-1840s. He proceeded to spend an immense amount of work on his history of Frederick the Great. In 1865 he was invited to become Rector of the University of Edinburgh, but published little of significance thereafter. Carlyle died in 1881. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803, the son of a Unitarian minister. He was himself ordained in 1829 but found he could not accept Unitarianist orthodoxy and in 1832, shortly after the death of his first wife, resigned his ministry and left for Europe, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Carlyle. Returning to Boston, Emerson turned from preaching to lecturing. In 1835 he remarried and settled in Concord, Massachusetts. He published his first book, Nature, in 1836, and was soon recognised as a revolutionary philosopher. In 1838 he became excluded from Harvard for claiming the priority of individual spiritual experience over any church. In 1842 he became editor of the Transcendentalist quarterly The Dial, and volumes of essays in 1841 and 1844 secured him European reputation. He also became known as a poet through two collections. In the 1850s he became an ardent supporter of the abolition of slavery. In 1866 Harvard conferred an honorary Doctorate of Law upon him. Emerson died in 1882.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780192818430 |
| ISBN 10 | 0192818430 |
| Title | The French Revolution |
| Author | Thomas Carlyle |
| Series | World's Classics S |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1989-12-01 |
| Number of pages | 1072 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |