This is the first time that Thomas Carlyle's remarkable The French Revolution: A History has been published in a comprehensive scholarly form. The edition features an abundance of new critical features, including a critical text that presents the edition much as it appeared in the first edition of 1837, but with a detailed record of the emendations that Carlyle made in subsequent versions during his lifetime. These volumes also contain a variety of scholarly aids - literary, textual, historical, and photographic - to render The French Revolution more approachable and readable to twenty-first century readers. The edition takes seriously Carlyle's claim to have produced a history of the Revolution that is rooted in his primary French sources. The extensive annotations vividly testify to his deep engagement in a wide array of histories, pamphlets, memoirs, and biographies. The notes not only demonstrate his complex method of history, but they also shed fresh light on his artistry and his rich use of language. For the first time, readers will be provided with numerous samples of engravings that Carlyle used from Chamfort's Tableaux historiques and other sources to visualize the "Flame Drama," as it was conceived by revolutionary artists and printers.

The appendices will also include an annotated version of Carlyle's essay, "On the Sinking of the Vengeur" (1839), in which he offers a detailed response to controversy surrounding the events that occurred during the naval battle between France and Britain on "the Glorious First of June," 1794; an image and transcription of an unpublished MS holograph excerpt from The French Revolution located in the Harry Ransom Center, Texas; and a copy of a corrected proof of 'The Feast of Pikes' held in the Forster Collection of the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Mark Cumming's profile page

David R. Sorensen's profile page

Mark Engel's profile page

Brent E. Kinser's profile page

Mark Cumming is a Professor of English Literature at Memorial University, Newfoundland. He is the editor of The Carlyle Encyclopedia (2004), and author of A Disimprisoned Epic: Form and Vision in Carlyle's French Revolution (1988), as well as several articles on Carlyle's theory and practice of history. He served as editor of Carlyle Studies Annual from 1999-2004.

David R. Sorensen is Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is a senior editor of the Duke-Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1970-ongoing, 46 vols.). His most recent work is an edited edition of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution for Oxford World's Classics (2019), with Brent E. Kinser and Mark Engel. He is co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual and a co-founder of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2011), a digital repository of Victorian life-writing.

Professional editor and independent classical scholar, Mark Engel was born in Los Angeles, and educated at Palisades High School and the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California. With Michael K. Goldberg and Joel J. Brattin, he edited On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1993), working through the many 19th century editions, to establish the authorized critical text, which is documented in the Note on the Text and the hefty textual apparatus. With Rodger L. Tarr, he edited Sartor Resartus (2000), again leading the painstaking collation and discussion of variants that produced the authorized critical text, which is fully documented. A lifelong friend and colleague of Gregory Bateson, he compiled and edited the paperback edition of Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Mark Engel also served on the International Bateson Institute Board until his death in December 2017. Working with David R. Sorensen and Mark Cumming, Mark Engel established the text of The French Revolution.

Brent E. Kinser is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, North Carolina. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is the author of The American Civil War and the Shaping of British Democracy (2011) as well as the co-editor (with David R. Sorensen) of Carlyle's On Heroes and Hero-Worship (2013). He is also co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual (2006--) and a founding director of The Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2012--).