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The Early Development of Carlyle's Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Francis X. Roellinger Jr.
Francis X. Roellinger Jr.*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
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Extract

In his admirable lectures, The Problem of Style, J. Middleton Murry illustrates one of the most common meanings of the word “style” by this remark: “I know who wrote the article in last week's Saturday Review—Mr. Saintsbury. You couldn't mistake his style.” Here, according to Mr. Murry, “‘style’ means that personal idiosyncrasy of expression by which we recognize a writer.” This is a limited conception of style, but it is useful in studying the style of certain writers. Murry mentions Dr. Johnson, Gibbon, Meredith, and Henry James as appropriate subjects for this approach. We may add, with the authority of precedent, Thomas Carlyle.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 5 , December 1957 , pp. 936 - 951
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

1 New York and London, 1922, p. 4.

2 Ed. Sartor Resartus (New York, 1937), Introd., pp. lix–lx.

3 Ed. Sartor Resartus (Boston and London, 1900), Introd., pp. xlvii–xlviii.

4 Thomas Çarlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835 (London, 1882), i, 396.

5 Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ed. Charles E. Norton (New York and London, 1886), pp. 20–21. Subsequent references to the early letters are to this edition and are in the text.

6 The Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H. D. Traill, Centenary ed. (New York, n.d.), xxx, 83. Subsequent references to Carlyle's essays are to this edition and are in the text.

7 Tufts Coll. Stud., 2nd Ser., No. 1 (Malden, Mass.).

8 David A. Wilson, Carlyle Till Marriage, 1795–1826 (London, 1923), p. 93.

9 Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1826–1836, ed. Charles E. Norton (New York and London, 1899), pp. 197–198.

10 Carlyle, trans. E. K. Brown (New York, 1932), p. 91.

11 Harrold's edition, pp. 251–252. Subsequent references to Sartor are to this edition.

12 Victorian Prose Masters (New York, 1928), p. 78.