The Selected Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle: A Victorian and a Contemporary

Presents an image of Victorian life—especially womens'lives—that uniquely and surprisingly anticipates our own in the presentA modern, complete and accessible selection of letters from an edition of nearly fifty volumesRespects the integrity of the materials; letters mostly printed complete, without ‘cherry-picking'Edited and annotated for a contemporary readership at both the scholarly and the general levelSupported by an overall biographical and critical introduction, separate chapter introductions to form the life story, annotation as required, and an appendix listing correspondents and personalitiesThis book is 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. They are arranged chronologically alongside biographical summary, and include her 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. The 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. List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction Chronology Editorial Note Further Reading Prelude: Youth, Courtship, Marriage, 1801–1828 1. ‘The Dreariest Spot in all the British Dominions’: 1828–1834 2. Arrival in Chelsea: 1834–1837 3. ‘The Lion’s Wife’: 1838–1842 4. ‘Alone, Alone in the World’: 1842–1843 5. The Onset of Lady Harriet: 1844–1847 6. The Widening Circle: 1848–1851 7. ‘The New-Modelling of our House’: 1852–1855 8. ‘More than One Place at a Time’: 1856–1859 9. The Rehabilitation of the Flesh: 1860–1862 10. The Accident in Cheapside: 1863–1864 11. ‘I Want so Much to Live’: 1865–1866 Characters and Correspondents Index