The Selected Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle

About the Book

Presents an image of Victorian life--especially womens' lives--that uniquely and surprisingly anticipates our own in the present

Book Synopsis

Presents an image of Victorian life-especially womens' lives-that uniquely and surprisingly anticipates our own in the present

From the Back Cover

[headline]Provides an intimate portrait of Victorian life - especially women's' lives - that uncannily anticipates the way we live now Offering a modern edition of an Anglo-Scottish epistolary classic, drawn from the authoritative scholarly edition, the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle are works of art in themselves, but also shed light on the Victorian age and the experience of women within it. Arranging her letters chronologically alongside a biographical summary, this collection includes Jane's correspondence concerning a large range of Victorian intellectuals and other identities, from Mazzini to Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Ruskin and Tennyson to George Eliot. These letters are commonly regarded as among the liveliest in the language, alongside those of Byron, Keats, Henry James and Virginia Woolf, and are a key document in feminist history and the history of female authorship. [bio]Richard Lansdown is Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Literature and Truth: Imaginative Writing as a Medium for Ideas (2018), A New Scene of Thought: Studies in Romantic Realism (2016), The Cambridge Introduction to Byron (2012), The Autonomy of Literature (2001) and Byron's Historical Dramas (1992). He is also editor of 21st-Century Authors: John Ruskin (2019), Byron's Letters and Journals: A New Selection (2015) and Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (2006).

Review Quotes

Wonderfully witty and absorbing, these letters are a compelling record of a remarkable life. The distinctive voice of Jane Welsh Carlyle was never subsumed into that of her celebrated husband Thomas, and this fine selection confirms her place among the most creative writers of the Victorian period.

--Dinah Birch, University of Liverpool

About the Author

Richard Lansdown is Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Literature and Truth: Imaginative Writing as a Medium for Ideas (Brill Rodopi, 2018), A New Scene of Thought: Studies in Romantic Realism (Brill Rodopi, 2016), The Cambridge Introduction to Byron (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Autonomy of Literature (Macmillan, 2001), and Byron's Historical Dramas (Oxford University Press, 1992), and the editor of 21st-Century Authors: John Ruskin (Oxford University Press, 2019), Byron's Letters and Journals: A New Selection (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (University of Hawai'i Press, 2006).