Carlyle–Emerson correspondence

"[2] Emerson, like many other Americans of his generation, felt that Carlyle was of a kindred spirit, and looked to the Scotsman as a teacher and guide through the perils of religious doubt.

Carlyle, though of a modest literary reputation, had received no visitors, and thus welcomed a guest, and decided beforehand that he should stay the night.

Carlyle did not accompany Emerson to the top of the hill; he "preferred to watch him mount and vanish like an angel."

Emerson recorded the visit in his journal "a white day in my years", and lamented the absence of Carlyle's company in his travels.

[5] In the first letter, Emerson gives his impressions of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–34), the book which animates much of the early correspondence.

Emerson was a key distributor of Carlyle's work in America during this time, and he personally arranged for the publication of Sartor, The French Revolution: A History (1837), and the Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1838–39).

[6] In 1847, Emerson embarked on an English lecture tour, during which he made his second visit to the Carlyles on 25 October, now living at 5 Cheyne Row in Chelsea, London.

In the late 1850s, the American Civil War became an issue that divided them, as Emerson became an abolitionist, and Carlyle sympathized with the Confederacy.

Not without difficulty, he read a paper, "Impressions of Thomas Carlyle in 1848", a compilation of earlier letters and journals.

In 1882, Norton read the first two volumes of James Anthony Froude's controversial four-volume biography of Carlyle with indignation.

Conway learned that some of Emerson's letters which had been printed were acquired by the magazines from the underground market in London.

[16] Conway discovered that Martin was a member of a group which dealt in pirated autographs and manuscripts and visited their place of operation.

Richard Herne Shepherd in The Gentleman's Magazine called it "a history of one of the most beautiful and remarkable friendships hitherto recorded in literary annals."

Edwin Percy Whipple in The North American Review greeted it as "a book which is destined to last for a century or two, at least."

George Edward Woodberry in The Atlantic Monthly found fault with Emerson: "It is pitiful to read Carlyle's appeals against his friend's silence".

James saw artistic value in the correspondence: "the united pair presents itself in something of the uplifted relief of a group on canvas or in marble."

like a good novel", as well as the respective style of each writer.The violent color, the large, avalanche-movement of Carlyle's style—as if a mass of earth and rock and vegetation had detached itself and came bouncing and bumping forward—make the efforts of his correspondent appear a little pale and stiff.