Ian Campbell, who has had access to a very large number of the relevant papers, has divided Carlyle's life into two definite parts-the Scottish years and the Chelsea years-and by mixing biography and literary criticism, has produced a full portrait of the man and his works. He traces Carlyle's development from the early years in Ecclefechan and then Edinburgh during its golden age of artistic and literary achievement, through his marriage to Jane and the writing of Sartor Resartus, to the year 1834 when they settled in London. The Chelsea years saw the emergence of Carlyle's massive works on the French Revolution, Cromwell and Frederick the Great, the publication of each involving a crisis in the Carlyles' strange domestic life. 1866 marked a high point, when he returned to Scotland in triumph as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University. Everything subsequent was tragic Jane's death, the drying-up of the historical muse, the withdrawal from public life. Yet, this was the period of private f