page_title: Thomas Carlyle
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Carlyle
caption_attribution_description: Thomas Carlyle
context_page_description: Thomas Carlyle was a British historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher. In his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History, he argued that the actions of the "Great Man" play a key role in history, claiming that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men". Other major works include The French Revolution: A History, 3 vols and The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vols.
  His 1837 history of The French Revolution was the inspiration for Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, and remains popular today. Carlyle's 1836 Sartor Resartus is a notable philosophical novel.
  A noted polemicist, Carlyle coined the term "the dismal science" for economics, in his essay "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", which advocated for the reintroduction of slavery to the West Indies. He also wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.
  Once a Christian, Carlyle lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, later adopting a form of deism.
context_section_description: Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a British historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher. In his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1841), he argued that the actions of the "Great Man" play a key role in history, claiming that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men". Other major works include The French Revolution: A History, 3 vols (1837) and The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vols (1858–65).
  His 1837 history of The French Revolution was the inspiration for Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, and remains popular today. Carlyle's 1836 Sartor Resartus is a notable philosophical novel.
  A noted polemicist, Carlyle coined the term "the dismal science" for economics, in his essay "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", which advocated for the reintroduction of slavery to the West Indies. He also wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.
  Once a Christian, Carlyle lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, later adopting a form of deism.
  In mathematics, he is known for the Carlyle circle, a method used in quadratic equations and for developing ruler-and-compass constructions of regular polygons.
caption: Photo by Elliott & Fry, c.1860s
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image ExifOffset": "50", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "280", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5405", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "856", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1172", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "150", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "f82f9ccecfdce067adc8fb206ace8281"}