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Letters index
Speeches index |
Letters and speeches of Oliver
Cromwell
The collected letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell
have appeared in many different editions and versions since they were
first published in 1845 by Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s fascination with
Cromwell grew out of his interest in the concept of heroes and hero
worship and he set out in the early 1840s to write a biography of
Cromwell. The challenge proved too great and he deliberately destroyed
his manuscript. He decided that the best alternative was to produce an
edition of Cromwell’s own words and that is what he produced.
There are a total of 205 letters and 19 speeches reproduced here.
The work very quickly went through three editions. It proved to be very
popular and helped to shape the image and profile of Cromwell in the
second half of the 19th century. The work was to a large extent replaced
as a source in 1937 by William Cortez Abbott’s edition of the Writings
and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell but Abbott lacked by his own admission
Carlyle’s ‘arresting style’ in the linking narrative text and
interpretation.
A new scholarly edition of the letters and speeches is now in course of
preparation by a team of leading academic experts and will be published
in due course and will set a new benchmark for textual accuracy. In the
meantime the letters and speeches available here, taken from the 2nd
edition of Carlyle of 1846 and initially transcribed by Cambridgeshire
Software House in 1999, provide a flavour of Oliver Cromwell’s own
words.
The Cromwell Museum and the Cromwell Association are grateful to CSH for
permission to use their transcriptions.
For those who would like to see the text of the more
more complete 1904 edition, edited by Mrs Lomas, a scanned version is
available at
http://www.archive.org/details/lettersspeecheso01cromuoft
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