Description

CARLYLE, Thomas French Revolution A History. In Three Volumes. London,James Fraser, 1839, second edition, 4,5 x 7 inches, VII, 354, 375, 400 pages, half leather binding (poor & detached), otherwise text clean and complete, stamp on each titel pages. François gros’s ex-libris, a famous book collector. “Of the three great political upheavals which have altered the face of the earth-the American, French and Russian Revolutions-only the French has stimulated literary masterpieces which, in turn, have made their impact, direct and indirect, upon millions of readers who would have, and have, left unread the productions of dispassionate scholarship. They are Carlyle’s book and the ‘History of the French Revolution’ by Michelet. Carlyle wrote his French revolution as a secular ‘tract for the times’ and as a warning for his compatriots of the frightful consequences of materialism, utilitarianism and democracy. Scottish puritanism and German romanticism were his lodestars; ‘History is the essence of innumerable biographies’ was his historical creed. The result is not a work of scholarship but a prose epic, teeming with colorful scenes of dramatic events and imaginative portraits of the leading revolutionaries. The book at once captured the Englihs-speaking world, and has, outside France, moulded popular conceptions of the French Revolution down to the present day”