{"id":7080,"date":"2007-09-27T08:33:57","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T12:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7080"},"modified":"2015-05-30T13:23:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T17:23:10","slug":"carlyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7080","title":{"rendered":"Describing Thomas Carlyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

An amazing letter from Margaret Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson – where she describes Thomas Carlyle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have been reading Carlyle’s incredible The French Revolution: A History <\/a>\"\"<\/i>, for, oh, 2 years now, off and on … I can only deal with a couple pages at a time, it’s so dense – you can’t even believe what you’re reading … you also can’t even believe that his star of fame has set so decidedly – he was once one of the most famous writers in the world!! THE historian. There’s definitely a feeling that that should not be the case – he should be read again – anyhoo, that’s neither here nor there. He is not an EASY read – not one sentence is easy, as a matter of fact – and sounds like, from the letter, that he was not an easy man in real life as well. I know he had a strange and long unhappy marriage … but perhaps a great brain such as himself could not really be happy amongst other human beings. Who knows. I love the glimpse we get of Carlyle here.<\/p>\n

\n