Thomas Carlyle was an extremely long-lived Victorian author. He was also highly controversial, variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian. Contradictions were rampant in the works of early biographers, and in the later twentieth century he is still far from being understood by a generation of critics awakening to his pivotal place in nineteenth-century Britain. His major works, long out of print and never properly edited, are soon to appear in new editions, thanks to the Essential Carlyle project (University of California Press), under the general editorship of Murray Baumgarten. The staggering correspondence he and his wife conducted with each other and with their formidable circle of friends and acquaintances (a circle which touched Victorian Britain at every point) will further enhance his reputation when the long process of editing and publishing it reaches an end. By...