Kenneth J. Fielding and David R. Sorensen
Ashgate
Hardback
380
2004
This new selection of the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle presents a complete view of a remarkable Victorian woman with a wide circle of friends who enjoyed the company of distinguished thinkers writers politicians feminists eccentrics and radicals. This edition draws on many remarkable letters and papers not published before in which she created a memorable epistolary voice ? shrewd vigorous ironic observant humorous and passionate. Previous selections have often tamely followed the semi-mythical version of her life first given by Carlyle?s biographer James Anthony Froude showing her as the victimized ?angel in distress.? This new selection gives a rounded picture of her complex character showing her as a tormented yet forceful woman who was a strong personality in her own right. She now emerges as a self-conscious artist adept at constructing images of herself that were designed to appeal to her particular correspondents. The account is written with close attention to Jane Carlyle's long-running jealousy of Lady Harriet Ashburton and fresh letters include many to her mother and her vital response to her passionate lover or admirer Charlotte Cushman. Each letter is a tightly controlled performance which justifies Thomas Carlyle?s belief that her letters ?equal and surpass whatever of best I know to exist in that kind.?
Ashgate
Hardback
380
2004
This new selection of the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle presents a complete view of a remarkable Victorian woman with a wide circle of friends who enjoyed the company of distinguished thinkers writers politicians feminists eccentrics and radicals. This edition draws on many remarkable letters and papers not published before in which she created a memorable epistolary voice ? shrewd vigorous ironic observant humorous and passionate. Previous selections have often tamely followed the semi-mythical version of her life first given by Carlyle?s biographer James Anthony Froude showing her as the victimized ?angel in distress.? This new selection gives a rounded picture of her complex character showing her as a tormented yet forceful woman who was a strong personality in her own right. She now emerges as a self-conscious artist adept at constructing images of herself that were designed to appeal to her particular correspondents. The account is written with close attention to Jane Carlyle's long-running jealousy of Lady Harriet Ashburton and fresh letters include many to her mother and her vital response to her passionate lover or admirer Charlotte Cushman. Each letter is a tightly controlled performance which justifies Thomas Carlyle?s belief that her letters ?equal and surpass whatever of best I know to exist in that kind.?