On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History remains one of the best repositories in English of the development

in late Romanticism called heroic vitalism.

The book, a series of six lectures that Carlyle delivered to London audiences in 1840,

represents not so much soundly based ideas about the making of history

as it does Carlyle's view of how the world would be if powerful and inspired

people were to have the power he thought they deserved.