Critical and Miscellaneous Essays is the title of a collection of reprinted reviews and other magazine pieces by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle.

As early as 1830 he thought about collecting these pieces in book form, but it was not until 1837 that he seriously prepared for such an edition,[3] when with the help of his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Martineau and others, he entered into negotiations with the Boston publisher James Munroe.

[6] American Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke recalled in 1864 that "especially to the younger men, this new writer came, opening up unknown worlds of beauty and wonder.

"[7] In the preface to the Boston edition, Emerson reminded American readers of "pages which, in the scattered anonymous sheets of the British magazines, spoke to their youthful mind with an emphasis that hindered them from sleep.

Doctor and theosophist William Ashton Ellis quoted from "Novalis" in a lecture delivered at a meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts on 3 February 1887.