Description
By Thomas Carlyle. Written by the Scottish essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle, this three-volume work, first published in 1837 (with a revised edition in print by 1857), charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to the height of the Reign of Terror (1793–94) and culminates in 1795.
It is a massive undertaking which draws together a wide variety of sources, Carlyle’s history—despite the unusual style in which it is written—is considered to be an authoritative account of the early course of the Revolution.
Carlyle unfolds his history by often writing in present-tense first-person plural: as though he and the reader were observers, indeed almost participants, on the streets of Paris at the fall of the Bastille or the public execution of Louis XVI. This, naturally, involves the reader by simulating the history itself instead of solely recounting historical events.
Carlyle further augments this dramatic effect by employing a style of prose poetry that makes extensive use of personification and metaphor.
A sampling of his text:
“All eyes are on Robespierre’s Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered, their ‘seventeen hours’ of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: ‘The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m’enivre de joi’; Robespierre opened his eyes; ‘Scélérat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!’—At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry;—hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick!”
Paperback, 798 pages
