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Social Scientists & Scholars, Historiography, British & Irish Literary Biography
Thomas Carlyle: A Biography by Fred Kaplan — book cover

Thomas Carlyle: A Biography

by Fred Kaplan
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Overview

The National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning portrait of the Victorian writer and historian Thomas Carlyle
A Pulitzer finalist that draws upon years of research and unpublished letters, Thomas Carlyle examines the life of the Victorian genius. Carlyle was the author of Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution: A History, and he possessed one of literature’s most flamboyant prose styles. Despite a childhood beset by anxiety and illness, Carlyle was indefatigable in his literary production. Fred Kaplan delves into the author’s intense personal life, which includes his turbulent marriage to author Jane Baillie Welsh and his disillusionment with religion. Kaplan is a devoted and sensitive explicator, vividly resurrecting both Carlyle and his Victorian setting.

About the Author, Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan (b. 1937) has written biographies of Charles Dickens, Henry James, Abraham Lincoln, Gore Vidal, and Mark Twain, as well as Sacred Tears, a study of sentimentality in Victorian literature. His biography Thomas Carlyle (1983) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kaplan is distinguished professor emeritus of English at both Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  

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Editorials

Frederick Busch

Fred Kaplan has performed a labor of love in a commendatory service. His Thomas Carlyle, which draws on unpublished letters, gives us our most complete picture of Carlyle in the context of his age… An achievement of much merit and a gift to students of the word.
Washington Post Book World

John Clive

[Carlyle] is alive and well (except for occasional stomach trouble), and living in Mr. Kaplan's biography.
Times Literary Supplement

Book Details

Published
April 23, 2013
Publisher
Open Road Publishing
Pages
614
ISBN
9781480409804

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