This series of “pamphlets” was first published in 1850 in vehement denunciation of what Carlyle believed to be the political, social and religious imbecilities and injustices of the period. The book, which at one point vindicated slavery, failed to gain the approval of the Victorian public and is often seen as a negative turning point in Carlyle’s career.
The best known of the essays in the collection is Hudson’s Statue, an attack on plans to erect a monument to the bankrupted financier George Hudson, known as the “railway king”. The essay expresses the central theme of the book – the corrosive effects of populist politics and of a culture driven by greed. Carlyle also attacked the prison system, which he believed to be too liberal, and the democratic parliamentary government.
The imaginary figure of “Bobus”, a corrupt sausage-maker turned politician first introduced in Past and Present, is used to epitomise the ways in which modern commercial culture saps the morality of society.