Four occurrences pervade this new collection of letters: the decline and death of Thomas Carlyle’s mother; Thomas’s continued research of Frederick the Great; the Carlyles’s struggle against the perpetual irritation of urban noise, particularly roosters, which led to the construction of a soundproof room; and the Carlyles’ introduction to Talbotypes, an early form of photography. While domestic concerns pervade the volume, it also provides the usual insight into societal and political culture of the 1850s through the couple’s interaction with influential figures, including Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Delia Bacon.

Kenneth J. Fielding is Emeritus George Saintsbury Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Ian Campbell is Professor of Scottish Literature and Aileen Christianson is Senior Lecturer in Scottish Literature, also at the University of Edinburgh.
David R. Sorensen is Associate Professor of English at St. Joseph’s University.

“Neurotic, complaining, self-absorbed and repetitive both Carlyles may be in their letters, but they are a pair entirely sui generis, both in their way endowed with genius, and no better observers existed of Victorian London life, from that of the richest aristocrats to that of the poorest foreign refugees.”—Rosemary Ashton, Times Literary Supplement