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.
Volume 29 resumes themes begun in earlier letters: Thomas's flirtatious exchanges with Lady Ashburton, the recent death of his mother, the improvement of his soundproof room, and his struggle to pursue his research for Frederick the Great. Other notable items include Dickens's dedication of Hard Times to Thomas and Thomas's support of G. H. Lewes during the scandal over Lewes's affair with George Eliot. The highlight of the volume is a passionate and humorous letter by Jane, subtitled "Budget of a Femme Incomprise," in which she defends the rising cost of running their house.
In volume 31, which covers the year 1856, the Carlyles continue a rigorous correspondence, depicting and examining Victorian London as well as its inhabitants. They also return to their native Scotland and offer details of their travels in the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands.
Volume 30 illuminates Jane's inner life with the help of two previously unpublished documents: her complete journals from the years 1845-1852 and 1855-1856 and an interview conducted by her friend Ellen Twiselton that chronicles a painful period in the Carlyle marriage. Also included here is Jane's story, "The Simple Story of My Own First Love," and discussions of her complicated relations with feminists, whom she admired yet distrusted. Meanwhile, Thomas is mired in his remarkable study of Frederick the Great, a figure he reveres as an exemplar of "veracity" in a shallow age—an image of Carlyle himself.
Volume 32 covers the period from October 1856 to July 1857. During this time, Jane is beset with a succession of illnesses, while Thomas prepares the first two books of his massive History of Frederick the Great for publication and labors on his publisher's proposed new "cheap" edition of his works. The "Indian mutiny," the bombardment of Canton, and a dissolution of the British Parliament also feature in this volume. In addition to its 168 richly annotated letters, many published here for the first time, volume 32 includes two appendixes: (1) advertisements in the Athenaeum for the "cheap edition" from December 1856 to December 1858 and (2) a transcription of Thomas Carlyle's marginal comments on a borrowed copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh.
About the disciple known as Doubting Thomas, everyone knows at least this much: he stuck his finger into the risen Jesus’ wounds. Or did he? A fresh look at the Gospel of John reveals how little we may really understand about this most perplexing of biblical figures, and how much we might learn from the strange twists and turns Thomas’s story has taken over time.
From the New Testament, Glenn W. Most traces Thomas’s permutations through the centuries: as Gnostic saint, missionary to India, paragon of Christian orthodoxy, hero of skepticism, and negative example of doubt, blasphemy, stupidity, and violence. Rife with paradoxes and tensions, these creative transformations at the hands of storytellers, theologians, and artists tell us a great deal about the complex relations between texts and their interpretations—and about faith, love, personal identity, the body, and twins, among other matters.
Doubting Thomas begins with a close reading of chapter 20 of the Gospel of John, set against the conclusions of the other Gospels, and ends with a detailed analysis of the painting of this subject by Caravaggio, setting it within the pictorial traditions of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Along the way, Most considers narrative reactions to John’s account by storytellers of various religious persuasions, and Christian theologians’ interpretations of John 20 from the second century ad until the Counter-Reformation. His work shows how Thomas’s story, in its many guises, touches upon central questions of religion, philosophy, hermeneutics, and, not least, life.
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