Carlyle, Jane Welsh

Definition

Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle (1801–1866) composed personal letters replete with scenes dramatizing the intricacies of life with her demanding and genius husband. She described supervising their servants and periodic episodes of revamping their household, and provided snapshots of many intellectual leaders of the age such as Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, and Jewsbury. In her youth, Welsh Carlyle was known as “the belle of Haddington”; she then became the wife of the “Sage of Chelsea”; and after her death was considered by different factions as a victim of her husband’s insensitivity and sexual dysfunction and an overly dramatic hypochondriac. Although her marriage was childless and she was often alone, the Carlyles’ correspondence shows the deep regard they always felt for each other. Jane Welsh Carlyle published nothing in her lifetime. After her death, Thomas Carlyle published his Reminiscences (1881), which contain his recollections of his wife and detail his sorrow for his...