Book description
They were the most remarkable couple in London: the great sage Carlyle,
with his vehement prophecies, and his witty, sardonic wife Jane. It was
a strong, close, mutually admiring yet often mutually antagonistic
partnership, fascinating to all who observed it. The Carlyles lived at
the heart of English life in mid-Victorian London, but both were
outsiders, a largely self-educated Scottish pair who took a sometimes
caustic look at the society they so influenced - Carlyle through his
copious writings, and both through their network of acquaintances and
correspondents. Carlyle's fame was confirmed by his Sartor Resartus of
1843, The French Revolution, his lectures on heroes and hero-worship and
by his radical account of contemporary industrial Britain in Past and
Present, 1843. Both husband and wife were great letter-writers, Carlyle
commenting on the matters of the day, dashing off pen portraits of those
he met and Jane with her brilliant stories and her sharp, dry humour.
Yet despite her brilliance, Jane suffered, especially from Carlyle's
infatuation with the lion-hunting Lady Ashburton, and the tensions in
their marriage grew. The letters they wrote, both to each other and to
others, make theirs the most well-documented marriage of the nineteenth
century and give us an unequalled portrait of a famously unhappy
marriage. This moving and vivid biography describes their relationship
with each other, from their first meeting in 1821 to Jane's death in
1866, and also their relationship with the world outside. Rosemary
Ashton's inimitable blend of rigorous scholarship, warm sensitivity and
lively wit makes this not only a portrait of a marriage but a picture of
a whole age, elegant, erudite and entertaining. Rosemary Ashton
studied at the universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, and is now
Professor of English at University College London. Her previous books
include studies of German thought and German exiles in Victorian
England, and three highly acclaimed biographies of G. H. Lewes, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and George Eliot (shortlisted for the Whitbread
Biography Prize, 1996).
