CARLYLE, Thomas.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Latter-Day Pamphlets. First edition in book form, 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 i

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