What features made Thomas Carlyle’s writing style unusual?

Thomas Carlyle’s writing style, often referred to as Carlylese, is characterized by a distinctively intense, "fiery," and doom-laden prose. His literary mannerisms are marked by several unusual features:12

• Sentence Structure: He frequently employed long and irregular sentence constructions.3
• Linguistic Innovation: His writing is noted for the use of neologisms (newly coined words) and Germanisms, reflecting his deep admiration for German literature.43
• Tone and Mood: His prose is notably contorted and shifts between being colloquial, humorous, and grim. It often incorporates prophetic harangues that many contemporary readers found puzzling.2
• Thematic Intensity: His style mirrors his "tortured and defiant spirit," driven by a serious desire to denounce evil and a habitual, nervous irritability. This resulted in a dramatic, high-stakes narrative voice that treated history as a form of "Divine Scripture".42

These stylistic excesses are so distinct that they have become a recognized literary term, sometimes used to describe writing that imitates his unique, often challenging, manner of expression.13