4 Thomas Carlyle first editions are documented on this shelf, from Sartor Resartus (1836) to Past and Present (1843) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Thomas Carlyle title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
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- Sartor Resartus — 1836 · James Munroe and CompanyThe true first book publication is Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1836 -- 299pp, bound in brown cloth with a gilt spine title -- an edition Ralph Waldo Emerson arranged and helped underwrite through an advance subscription among friends, after the work had appeared only as a magazine serial in Fraser's Magazine (November 1833-August 1834). The first authorized English book edition followed as London: Saunders…. The Boston 1836 Munroe edition, arranged by Emerson, is the true first edition in book form, preceding the first authorized English book edition (Saunders and Otley, London, 1838) by two years; a privately printed 58-copy London reprint of the Fraser's Magazine setting exists from 1834 but was not a public trade publication.
- The French Revolution: A History — 1837 · James FraserFirst edition, London: James Fraser, 1837, in three octavo volumes collating vii,[1],404; vii,[1],422,[2]; vii,[1],448pp, including a half-title in each volume. This is a reconstructed text: the only complete manuscript of the first volume, which Carlyle had lent to John Stuart Mill, was accidentally burned as waste paper in March 1835 by a maidservant at the house of Mill's friend Mrs. (Harriet) Taylor, where…. Carlyle revised the text for the Second Edition (1839), Third Edition (1848), and the Uniform Edition (1857-58); only the three-volume 1837 James Fraser first edition preserves the wording he originally published.
- On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History — 1841 · James FraserFirst edition, London: James Fraser, 1841 (entered at Stationers' Hall 17 June 1841), collating (viii)+393pp, reprinting the six lectures Carlyle delivered in London between 5 and 22 May 1840. The work was issued in the publisher's original cloth binding; because copies were heavily read, surviving first editions are frequently found rebound in contemporary or later calf or fine-binder's leather (three-quarter or….
- Past and Present — 1843 · Chapman and HallFirst edition, London: Chapman and Hall, 1843, octavo, vi+399pp, bound in black ribbed, blind-stamped cloth with the title lettered in gilt on the spine and pale yellow endpapers. Chapman and Hall succeeded James Fraser -- publisher of Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837), Chartism (1839), and On Heroes (1841) -- as Carlyle's principal London publisher beginning with this title, and remained so for the rest of…. London (Chapman and Hall) was published in April 1843, preceding the Boston (Little and Brown) edition of May 1843 by about a month.
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