Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It "remains one of the most important works of British history published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Composition Carlyle was attracted to Cromwell due to their shared Protestant upbringing and biblical rhetorical style, as well as Cromwell's "sense of the divine vitality of the universe, his hostility to democracy, and his belief that heroes can be the agents of God's will." Carlyle began writing with Cromwell in mind in 1840 but he did not settle on Cromwell's letters and speeches as the focus of a book until late 1843. His first definitive statement that he would collect the letters and speeches comes in a letter to Edward FitzGerald dated 9 January 1844 wherein he proposed "the gathering of all Oliver's Letters and Speeches, and stringing them together according to the order of time."