Week Four – Thursday 1st November
Francis Jeffrey in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus
Dr Will Christie, University of Sydney
Carlyle called Francis Jeffrey the greatest literary critic of his time and a "Scotch Voltaire". Dr Christie will be talking about Carlyle's representation of Francis Jeffrey, founder and editor of the Edinburgh review. Carlyle met and formed a friendship with Jeffrey during the lean-years spent in Scotland from 1826. His quasi-autobiographical Shandean parody of English empiricism, Sartor Resartus, was written in 1831 whilst living in Scotland before the move to London in 1834.
Dr Will Christie is author of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life (Basingstoke, Hants, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). His current projects include:
- A study of the Edinburgh Review in early nineteenth-century British culture and society
- The life and correspondence of Francis Jeffrey and Thomas Carlyle
- 'Eating Their Words': a study of literary influence
- A literary biography of Dylan Thomas