The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415260140 ISBN 13: 9780415260145

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

Those who knew the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell at the turn of the century referred to him as 'the Day of Judgement'. This acclaimed selection of his early letters, available in paperback for the first time, reveals the full scope of Russell's life and innermost thoughts up to the First World War. It includes letters to his first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith, reveals the background to his now famous work in philosophy and the foundations of mathematics and how his mind was stirred by socialism, free trade and votes for women. It also contains letters on his famous affair with Ottoline Morrell, providing yet another insight into one of the great intellectual figures of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author:

Bertrand Russellwas one of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth century. Nicholas Griffin is Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University. He is editor of two volumes of Russell's Collected Papers (Vol 1 1988; Vol 2 1990), published by Routledge.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An ``epistolary biography'' comprised of a selection of Russell's previously unpublished correspondence--mostly love letters to his wife, Alys, and to Ottoline Morrell, a married Bloomsbury courtesan--discussing his work, education, women's rights, and his own priggish morality. Griffin (Philosophy/McMaster Univ.) clearly appreciates both the cerebral ``logic machine,'' as Russell called himself, and the lonely, confused, passionate lover. Descended from eccentric, politically powerful aristocrats and orphaned at an early age, Russell (1872-1970), over the objections of his grandmother, married an American Quaker five years his senior--the subject of many letters. Fearful of perpetuating the madness that had haunted both of their families, the couple avoided children but feared contraception, which Russell believed had caused his father's epilepsy. Still, the first ten years of his marriage were his most ``fruitful'' as a mathematical philosopher. They were followed by ten years of dutiful devotion to his emotionally fragile wife--whom, impulsively, he had decided he didn't love. Russell did love the elusive Ottoline, however, whom he wooed with long daily letters, over one thousand of them. During a year in America, he found a cure for the gum disease that had made him repugnant to Ottoline--and he fell for another woman, 28- year-old Helen Dudley, who, as this collection concludes, was on her way to England to marry him and to bear the children he longed for. The great names are all here: Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Joseph Conrad, Gilbert Murray, et al., with their brilliant minds, high causes--and dysfunctional lives. And, as these letters so pitifully reveal, Russell's strength as a philosopher--his abstract, unyielding, insular nature--prevented him from achieving the intimacy, children, and romance he craved. A brilliant psychological portrait, annotated and explained with tact and sensitivity. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0415260140
• ISBN 13: 9780415260145
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 588
• Editor: Griffin Nicholas