Froude's Life of Carlyle

“That was the revelation of the Froude biography: a great man can be a terrible husband. Victorian London had a dizzying few weeks; this book had a wonderful effect on people, in the way a great novel or play might sometimes cause a society to look at itself and ask: is that really what we’re like? Aside from that, Froude is just such an entertaining writer. He’s so fluid. Clearly he has the requisite admiration of Carlyle, but whenever these questions of whether Carlyle was bad come up, he will move like a pendulum between ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and constantly descend into the particulars.” Read more...

The Best Intellectual Biographies

Henry Oliver, Biographer