REVIEWS 187 John Clubbe ed., Froude's Life of Carlyle. Abridged and edited by John Clubbe. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1979. 725 pp. $30.00 In its candid details, psychological interpretation and lucid style, James Anthony Froude's Life of Carlyle (1882, 1884) remains one of the major biographies of the nineteenth-century. But its voluminous size—nearly 1900 pages in four volumes—disproportionate treatment of the life, and controversial reception have discouraged readers from becoming familiar with the text. John Clubbe, however, has now eliminated the largest of these deterrents—its size and correspondingly diffuse structure—by editing a one volume abridgement of the life. Through the removal of long extracts from the letters and journals of Carlyle as well as eliminating the excessive documentation in the biography , Clubbe has achieved a coherance the original four volumes lacked. Enhanced by an incisive introduction that argues for a more considered analysis of the form and style of the biography as well as a re-evaluation of Froude as a biographer, the new one-volume life is a significant contribution to both the study of Victorian biography and the importance of Froude as a writer. Ira Bruce Nadel University of British Columbia ...