Anglo-Scottish Relations: the Carlyles in London
Anglo-Scottish Relations: the Carlyles in London
This chapter provides the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. Thomas travelled to London with the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, hoping to find a publisher for that strange satirical rhapsody. This work mounted a sustained rhetorical attack on ‘the condition of England’. It is not the case that the Scottish Carlyle opposed all things English as somehow inferior to the institutions and doings in his native land. He was never inclined to support Scottish separatism. He and his wife, Jane, later agreed to preferring life in London. Sartor Resartus would eventually claim the status of an iconic work. In Sartor itself, Carlyle's German philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh states that he honours two kinds of men, ‘and no third’. The distinctive Carlylean voice of Sartor Resartus acted on its readers as a secular Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress for the age.
Keywords: Thomas Carlyle, Jane Carlyle, London, Sartor Resartus, Scottish separatism
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