The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle: 1853

Duke University Press is again proud to publish a new volume in the series of the Carlyle letters. Four occurrences pervade this new collection of letters: the decline and death of Thomas Carlyle’s mother, Thomas’s continued research of Frederick the Great, the Carlyles’s struggle against the perpetual irritation of urban noise, particularly roosters, which led to the construction of a sound-proof room, and the introduction to Carlyles of Talbotypes, an early form of photography. While domestic concerns pervade the volume, it also provides the usual insight to societal and political culture of the 1850s through the couples’ interaction with influential people, including Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Delia Bacon.