First published in 1843, Past and Present blends medieval history with criticism of nineteenth century British society. Carlyle wrote the book in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing his biography of Oliver 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 – a theme he developed from his earlier ‘condition of England’ writing.
By this point, Carlyle had perfected what has become known as the ‘prophetic’ mode of writing, in which the commentator points to a phenomenon in contemporary life as a symptom of a wider, more catastrophic problem in the order of things, offering contrasting visions of disaster and utopia, depending on whether the situation can be remedied or not. Modelled on the rhetoric of Old Testament prophets, Anglican sermons and eighteenth century satire, Carlyle’s perfection of this mode of social commentary earned him the mantle of the ‘Victorian sage’.