After struggling to formulate his response to these events, he wrote to his sister in January 1850 that he had "decided at last to give vent to myself in a Series of Pamphlets; 'Latter-Day Pamphlets' is the name I have given them, as significant of the ruinous overwhelmed and almost dying condition in which the world paints itself to me." The title is derived from the Book of Job: "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth".

Carlyle conceived of the