CARLYLE, Thomas.. Latter-Day Pamphlets.. London: Chapman and Hall, 1850, 1850.

Price: US$3215.69 + shipping

Description: First edition in book form, and a major presentation copy to one of the key figures in Carlyle's life, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to the literary hostess Harriet Mary Baring, Baroness Ashburton: "The Lady Ashburton: 25 Dec, 1850: - T.C.". Of aristocratic lineage, Ashburton (1805-1857) married into the Baring banking dynasty and "established one of the foremost literary salons in the country, gathering around her such men of letters as Richard Monckton Milnes, A. H. Clough, Charles Buller, Sydney Smith, William Makepeace Thackeray, and, pre-eminently, Thomas Carlyle. To Carlyle, she was a 'glorious Queen', the 'lamp of my dark path'" (ODNB, Lady Ashburton). Carlyle first met Ashburton in late 1839 and maintained a correspondence for many years. She was a major intellectual stimulus to him, and he frequently visited her grand residences, Bath House in Piccadilly and The Grange in Hampshire. The relationship was surely non-romantic, but caused much misery to Carlyle's wife Jane, who felt increasingly spurned by Carlyle as he turned to Ashburton for company and intellectual fulfilment. "Jane's resentment was understandable since the attraction struck at her union with Carlyle by robbing her of the 'genius' who had come to dominate any society in which they found themselves and on whose achievements she had staked so much. Lady Harriet enjoyed her role as literary lion tamer, and felt an affection for her greatest capture; and, bizarre as it may seem, Carlyle was bemused by her and delighted in an almost rapturous correspondence. Between the three of them, there were times of steady friendship, punctuated by jealous outbreaks when Lady Harriet's letters were clearly unwelcome at Cheyne Row. It dragged on because Jane Carlyle generally fought down her feelings, while Carlyle was unwilling to give up his circle of acquaintances with the Ashburtons, including many of his closest friends" (ODNB, Jane Carlyle). Latter-Day Pamphlets presented Carlyle's views on various political and social questions, in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848 and his visit to Ireland during the Great Famine. It marked the culmination of years of increasingly controversial public statements, constituting "a shriek of satiric and Swiftian despair" (ODNB, Thomas Carlyle) against modernity, democracy, and materialism. The work was first issued as eight pamphlets from February to August 1850, and published in book form in the month of completion. Given the date of inscription, Carlyle evidently presented the volume as a Christmas gift. Lady Ashburton did not keep the volume long, and appears not to have read it, as it remains largely unopened. She soon re-presented the volume, inscribing below Carlyle's inscription, "General Radowitz from H. M. Ashburton The Grange, Jan. 11th 1851". The Prussian general and statesman Joseph Maria von Radowitz (1797-1853), who was then in England and dined with the Queen later that month, was a prominent proponent of German unification under Prussian leadership and a close adviser of Crown Prince Frederick William. Lady Ashburton later tried to arrange a meeting with Carlyle and Radowitz while the former was in Germany, but Radowitz did not attempt it - Carlyle wrote somewhat petulantly "I expected some movement from Radowitz. in these parts; but there has nothing whatever of the kind taken place: which, on the whole, has been a convenience to me rather than otherwise; Radowitz except as a sight (and not much as that) being completely nothing to me, or even less in this pressure of persons" (letter from Carlyle to Jane, 8 October 1852, accessible on Carlyle Letters Online). Tarr A21.1.c Octavo. Dark green fine diaper grain cloth (binding A), binder's ticket of Bone & Son to rear pastedown, spine lettered in gilt, spine and covers with blind floral blocking, yellow endpapers. Housed in custom red quarter morocco box. Bookplate to front pastedown of H. & C. Michaelis, dated 1902. Loss at head of spine and split at head of joints, still all holding, front inner hinge neatly repaired, rear inner hinge splitting. A presentable copy, with the contents almost entirely unopened.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom