Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is a novel written in 1831 about the life and philosophy of fictional German Professor Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. The novel's narrator is an unnamed fictional Editor, who attempts to compile Teufelsdröckh's philosophical writing into a single coherent volume, while telling some of the Professor's life story. Sartor Resartus is a short novel, coming in at just under 80,000 words. So why is an abridged version needed? Simply put, because it is complicated. Modern readers, who would benefit from Carlyle's ideas, get lost in long sentences and distracted by the storyline. Modern readers are not alone. Ralph Waldo Emerson thought so too. Emerson is regarded as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 19th century and foremost of the American Transcendentalist movement. In his first letter to Thomas Carlyle, Emerson criticized the complex writing style found in Sartor Resartus. Emerson wrote:
"But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; [but] the form... makes me not appreciate [the book]. ... At least in some of your prefaces you should give us the theory of your rhetoric. I comprehend not why you should lavish in that spendthrift style of yours celestial truths. ... You are dispensing that which is rarest, namely, the simplest truths. ... I look for the hour with impatience when the vehicle will be worthy of the spirit, -when the word will be as simple, and so as resistless, as the thought, -and, in short, when your words will be one with things."
This newly edited and abridged version titled, Here are Golden Words: Sartor Resartus Abridged for Modern Times, attempts to fulfill Emerson's wish for a simpler presentation and reintroduce Carlyle's transcendentalism to a new generation of readers.