The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Duke-Edinburgh edition (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1970 to 2023) was one of the major editorial projects in Victorian studies of the last half-century.
Charles Richard Sanders of Duke University began the edition during the 1950s with a wide-ranging search for surviving manuscript letters, the number of which eventually grew to exceed 10,000.
The search went from the National Library of Scotland (which holds the world’s largest collection of Carlyle manuscripts) to the many other major libraries with substantial Carlyle holdings, including Edinburgh University Library.
Originally a joint venture between the University of Edinburgh (UoE) and Duke University, the project became a joint venture between UoE and Duke University Press in Durham, North Carolina.
Since the publication of the first four volumes in 1970, the edition has produced a further 46 fully-edited, annotated and indexed volumes - 50 print volumes in total.
The scale of the edition is formidable, but so is the richness of the material. Both Carlyles were very gifted and prolific letter-writers; they had a wide circle of friends, family and acquaintance in Scotland, England, Europe and North America; through their letters they interacted with many of the outstanding writers, thinkers and political figures of their time.
The Duke-Edinburgh print edition has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy in the UK and by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation in the US. It has been honoured and recognised both for its editing and its re-establishment of the Carlyles as pivotal figures in our understanding of the 19th century.