Many of its first readers were shocked by the impression it gave of a harsh, gloomy, censorious personality and of a man racked by remorse over his failings as a husband; it did Carlyle's reputation as the sage and prophet of the Victorian era lasting harm.

Carlyle was famous for the brilliance of his conversation, which often turned on his memories of his past life in Scotland, and the Reminiscences have been called "a crystallization of many such nights' talk",[2] presented in a more personal, unliterary style than he usually adopted.

Stunned by this news, and unable to attend the funeral, his mind was forcibly turned to his earliest memories, inducing him to write a reminiscence of his father and of his own childhood.

[10] Carlyle went through his wife's letters, admiring their literary excellence and wit, and shocked and guilt-stricken at the depth of sadness, partly caused by his own insensitivity and neglect of her, they revealed.

[5] He began a reminiscence of the clergyman Edward Irving in autumn 1866, then another of the lawyer and editor Francis Jeffrey, both of them close friends of himself and of Jane.

"[14] Finally, two more short pieces, on the lawyer and critic "Christopher North" (pseudonym of John Wilson) and the philosopher Sir William Hamilton, were completed on 26 March 1868 and 19 February 1868 respectively.

[17] The "hail-storm of criticism", as Froude described it, was in part directed at himself for his failure to excise passages that might harm Carlyle's reputation, with one letter to The Times comparing his editorial technique to that of a carter dumping a load of bricks.

[26][16] J. C. Morison, a former disciple of Carlyle, complained in The Fortnightly Review that the Reminiscences showed him "inwardly bankrupt of faith, hope and charity, looking on the world with moody anger and querulous unsatisfied egotism".

George Bentley, in Temple Bar, wrote that "probably in English literature there is nowhere to be found written by a man so eminent and so religiously minded, a more unkind, splenetic and scornful book".