Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle

Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle 1801-66, English woman of letters; wife of Thomas Carlyle , whom she married in 1826. She possessed a genius for letter writing, manifest in the volumes of her published correspondence (1883, 1924, 1931).

Bibliography: See edition of her letters by T. Bliss (1950); biography by E. A. Drew (1928, repr. 1973); studies by L. Hanson (1952), and J. Markus (2000); studies of the Carlyle marriage by T. Holme (1965, repr. 2000), P. Rose (1983), and R. Ashton (2003).

Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh (1801–66), married Thomas Carlyle in 1826, and is remembered as one of the best letter-writers in the English language, witty, caustic, and observant, and as a literary hostess who impressed all who met her. Her vast circle of friends, acquaintances, and correspondents included Mazzini, R. Browning, Tennyson, J. Forster, and G. Jewsbury, but many of her best letters were written to her relatives in Edinburgh and Liverpool and, most notably, to Thomas himself. Various collections and selections of her letters have been published, including editions by J. A. Froude (1883), Leonard Huxley (1924), and T. Scudder (1931).