Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795 in Ecclefechan, a small market village in Dumfriesshire. He studied for the ministry, enrolled in law classes, and taught briefly before deciding on a career as a writer. During the 1820s, his essays and translations helped to introduce German literature and thought to a British audience. Sartor Resartus, his one full-scale work of imaginative fiction, was first published periodically in 1833–4. In 1826 Carlyle had married Jane Welsh. In 1834 they moved from Scotland to London and settled at Cheyne Row, Chelsea. It was here that Carlyle wrote the works that confirmed his position as the most influential of the Victorian cultural leaders: The French Revolution (1837), On Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), Past and Present (1843), Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), and the six-volume history of Frederick the Great (1858–65). His Reminiscences were published shortly after his death, in 1881.
David R. Sorensen is Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is a senior editor of the Duke–Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1970–ongoing). His most recent work is the edited edition of Carlyle’s On Heroes and Hero-Worship (2013), with Brent E. Kinser. He is co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual and a founding director of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2011–).
Brent E. Kinser is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, North Carolina. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is the author of The American Civil War and the Shaping of British Democracy (2011). His most recent work is the edited edition of Carlyle’s On Heroes and Hero-Worship (2013), with David R. Sorensen. He is co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual and a founding director of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2011–).
Mark Engel was a professional editor and independent scholar. He edited with Michael K. Goldberg and Joel J. Brattin, Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1993) and with Rodger L. Tarr, Sartor Resartus (2000). He died in December 2017.