Penguin Classics: Selected Writings

Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty . . . for it is the hour!’

Thomas Carlyle was the Victorian era’s prophetic voice. Historian, iconoclast and resolute Romantic, he cried out against a utilitarian age of machines, and spoke with visionary clarity and conviction to a generation unnerved by the upheavals of industrialisation and widespread political unrest. Among his ardent admirers were Charles Dickens and even philosophical opponents such as John Stuart Mill. This collection represents every stage of his career, including selections from his masterpiece The French Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Signs of the Times and Chartism.

Edited with an introduction by Alan Shelston