On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History is Thomas Carlyle’s famous series of lectures arguing that the course of history is largely shaped by the deeds of great men. Delivered in 1840 and published the following year, the work sets out Carlyle’s influential, and much-debated, theory of heroic leadership.
Carlyle examines the hero in various guises, as divinity, prophet, poet, priest, man of letters, and king, drawing on figures such as Odin, Muhammad, Dante, Shakespeare, Luther, Cromwell, and Napoleon. Written in his vigorous, declamatory prose, the lectures celebrate sincerity, will, and moral force as the engines of human progress. Both admired and criticised, the book remains a landmark of nineteenth-century thought and a key statement of the great man theory of history.