In his 1840 lectures on heroes, Thomas Carlyle, Victorian essayist and social critic, championed the importance of the individual in history. Published the following year and eventually translated into fifteen languages, this imaginative work of history, comparative religion, and literature is the most influential statement of a man who came to be thought of as a secular prophet and the "undoubted head of English letters" (Emerson). His vivid portraits of Muhammad, Dante, Luther, Napoleonjust a few of the individuals Carlyle celebrated for changing the course of world historymade On...

Sartor Resartus is Thomas Carlyle's most enduring and influential work. First published in serial form in Fraser's Magazine in 1833-1834, it was discovered by the American Transcendentalists. Sponsored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was first printed as a book in Boston in 1836 and immediately became the inspiration for the Transcendental movement. The first London trade edition was published in 1838. By the 1840s, largely on the strength of Sartor Resartus, Carlyle became one of the leading literary figures in Britain.
Sartor Resartus became one of the important...