Reminiscences (Carlyle)

Reminiscences

Title page of the first English edition
Author	Thomas Carlyle
Language	English
Genre	Autobiography
Published	1881
Publisher	Longmans, Green, and Co.
Publication place	England

Reminiscences is a book by historian and social critic Thomas Carlyle, posthumously published in 1881, which contains two lengthy memoirs of the author's wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, and friend Edward Irving, together with shorter essays on his father and some of the literary friends of his youth. The book's emphasis primarily rests on Carlyle's relationship with the subjects. The book was begun in 1832 but mainly written in the year following Jane Carlyle's death, in April 1866. 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. Nevertheless, it is characterized by great vividness and accuracy of detail, and by a comparatively direct, conversational style, and has been called an autobiographical masterpiece.