Past and Present Chartism & Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle Beautiful Leather and Marbled Antique Book Complete in One Volume 1848

Past and Present Chartism & Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle Beautiful Leather and Marbled Antique Book Complete in One Volume 1848

<Condition is Good+ as Pictured> (normal wear with markings, light foxing/toning/fading, visible edge-wear, text block is sound, a beautiful copy overall)

—Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish cultural critic, essayist, historian, lecturer, mathematician, philosopher and translator. Known as the Sage of Chelsea, he became “the undoubted head of English letters” in the 19th century.

Past and Present is a book by Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Cromwell. He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund’s Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle’s fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks’ reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day.

Sartor Resartus (His First Major Works) was begun as a satirical article on “the philosophy of clothes” and surprised him by growing into a full-length book. He wrote it in 1831 at the house on his wife Jane’s estate, Craigenputtock, and it was intended to be a new kind of book: simultaneously factual and fictional, serious and satirical, speculative and historical. Ironically, it commented on its own formal structure while forcing the reader to confront the problem of where “truth” is to be found. Sartor Resartus was first published in instalments in Fraser’s Magazine from 1833 to 1834. The text presents itself as an unnamed editor’s attempt to introduce the British public to Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a German philosopher of clothes, who is, in fact, a fictional creation of Carlyle’s. The Editor is struck with admiration, but for the most part is confounded by Teufelsdröckh’s outlandish philosophy, of which the Editor translates choice selections. To try to make sense of Teufelsdröckh’s philosophy, the Editor tries to piece together a biography, but with limited success. Underneath the German philosopher’s seemingly ridiculous statements, there are mordant attacks on Utilitarianism and the commercialisation of British society. The fragmentary biography of Teufelsdröckh that the Editor recovers from a chaotic mass of documents reveals the philosopher’s spiritual journey. He develops a contempt for the corrupt condition of modern life. He contemplates the “Everlasting No” of refusal, comes to the “Centre of Indifference”, and eventually embraces the “Everlasting Yea”. This voyage from denial to disengagement to volition would later be described as part of the existentialist awakening.
-Given the genre-breaking nature of Sartor Resartus, it is not surprising that it at first achieved little attention. Its popularity developed over the next few years, and it was published as a single volume in Boston 1836, with a preface by Ralph Waldo Emerson, influencing the development of New England Transcendentalism. The first British book edition followed in 1838.

Carlyle’s works amount to thirty volumes, most of which are in the genres of history and the critical essay. His distinctive style, called Carlylese, is rich in vocabulary, humor and allusion; his writing has been described as proto-postmodern. His early essays and translations single-handedly introduced German Romanticism to the English-speaking world. In his histories, Carlyle drew lessons from the past in order to impart wisdom upon the present, using contrast to illuminate problems as well as solutions. He championed the Captain of Industry (for whom he coined the term) and such figures as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great, writing that “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great men who have worked here.” He rejected materialism and utilitarianism, referring to economics as “the dismal science”.

Carlyle has often been regarded as a prophet. Immensely influential, his work shaped such varied areas of thought as Romanticism, transcendentalism, medievalism, socialism, Irish rebellion, Southern secession, aestheticism, the Arts and Crafts movement, and fascism; he occupied a central position in Victorian intellectual life. His reputation fluctuated in the 20th century, depreciating during the Edwardian era, reviving in the interwar period, and withering in the years that followed the Second World War. Activity in the field of Carlyle scholarship has increased since the 1960s, with studies, journals, and critical editions of his œuvre in steady production.


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