1st Edition
Jane Carlyle Newly Selected Letters
This new selection of the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle presents a complete view of a remarkable Victorian woman, with a wide circle of friends, who enjoyed the company of distinguished thinkers, writers, politicians, feminists, eccentrics and radicals. This edition draws on many remarkable letters and papers not published before, in which she created a memorable epistolary voice - shrewd, vigorous, ironic, observant, humorous and passionate. Previous selections have often tamely followed the semi-mythical version of her life first given by Carlyle’s biographer, James Anthony Froude, showing her as the victimized angel in distress. This new selection gives a rounded picture of her complex character, showing her as a tormented yet forceful woman who was a strong personality in her own right. She now emerges as a self-conscious artist, adept at constructing images of herself that were designed to appeal to her particular correspondents. The account is written with close attention to Jane Carlyle's long-running jealousy of Lady Harriet Ashburton; and fresh letters include many to her mother and her vital response to her passionate lover or admirer Charlotte Cushman. Each letter is a tightly controlled performance, which justifies Thomas Carlyle’s belief that her letters equal and surpass whatever of best I know to exist in that kind.
Biography
Kenneth J. Fielding and David R. Sorensen
'The kind of pleasure one takes in reading Jane Carlyle's letters is akin to that felt on reading a good novel.' Times Literary Supplement 'Jane Carlyle is unsurpassed among women letter-writers for wit and graphic power. ... Jane found relief from her frustration in curiosity, sharp humor and an effortless command of words. She knew some of the most interesting people of her time, too. She conjures up scenes and incidents with a vividness that makes you wonder why she didn't become one of the great Victorian novelists.' John Gross, The Wall Street Journal 'Everyone knows the story of J. S. Mill’s maid accidentally burning part of Carlyle’s manuscript of The French Revolution. But Jane made her own less celebrated fire deliberately, after she caught George Craik reading her journal and decided that it was too dangerously intimate to exist. Reading these marvellous letters, with their vividness and wit, one can only mourn the loss. ' The Spectator '... a valuable addition to our understanding of a brilliant and fascinating woman.' The Herald 'The introduction and notation are excellent and the selection probably gives us as accurate a portrayal of Jane Carlyle (and her world) as is possible.' Contemporary Review 'This is part of a handsome series The Nineteenth Century edited from the University of Leicester, and it affords an opportunity for book-length assessments of topics [...] and individuals... Professor Fielding and Sorensen have produced in this substantial anthology a richly detailed and authoritatively edited view which reinforces what we knew [...] and opens out much that we did not, for the reason that much of what they now present is only recently discovered, and a great amount published for the first time... the letters selected here flesh out a wholly new Jane, and the newly-discovered material by her, and about her, give her a presence never before felt, an insight into her attitude to her husband, her society, into her religious beliefs a
