Beschreibung:

Thomas Carlyle
Scrap-book containing manuscript fragments and corrected proofs, most seemingly relating to Frederick the Great,
including revised drafts, preliminary notes, corrections on slips of paper, manuscript pages in other hands with Caryle's annotations, altogether c.45 manuscript pages, and 19 pages of extensively corrected galley proofs, together with cuttings, cartoons, and other items, many pieces crudely mounted onto rice paper in an album with marbled boards, lower board missing, significant wear and tear to most pages, some items loose, remains of binding heavily worn
This group of papers is a rich source for the complex development of Carlyle's last masterpiece, his History of Friedrich the Second called Frederick the Great. The subject had interested Carlyle for decades before he began his sustained research in 1851. He struggled with the tedium of his predecessors, doubt about the project, and noisy neighbours in Chelsea. The book expanded from the original plan of four volumes to six, and was not completed until 1865. 
The current papers are fragments from different parts of Carlyle's work, from Carlyle's copy of Frederick's own account of his disguised visit to Strasbourg in 1740 to galley proofs in which Carlyle tackles "the Polish question", which appeared in significantly different form in the final volume of the book. Other papers relating to Frederick the Great are held at Yale's Beinecke Library, whilst his working library for the project was donated at Carlyle's death to Harvard. 
PROVENANCE:Thomas Carlyle; Alexander Carlyle (1843-1931) and Mary Carlyle Aitken (1848-95); thence by direct descent