Thomas Carlyle, Latter-day Pamphlets

Nathan Uglow (Trinity All Saints, Leeds)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

In the last days of a decade that came to be known as “the hungry forties”, Carlyle surveyed the world around him and found little to admire. So many of the European revolutions of 1848 had petered out in futile wrangling about constitutional detail or in post revolutionary settlements that ended up simply replacing a do-nothing aristocracy with leave-it-alone economics. Personal leadership grounded in shared obligations and duties had ultimately come off second best to rationalistic bureaucratic forms of government grounded in constitutional and economic theory. Tragically, Carlyle had not had to look far from home for compelling evidence of what such professional government actually meant in practice. Throughout 1849 the Great …

1968 words

Citation: Uglow, Nathan. "Latter-day Pamphlets". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 March 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4100, accessed 26 November 2024.]

4100 Latter-day Pamphlets 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.