The Sense of Reality. Studies in Ideas and Their History

Berlin, Isaiah; edited by Henry Hardy; Introduction by Patrick Gardiner

ISBN 10: 0374525692 / ISBN 13: 9780374525699

Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1998

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 53570

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Sense of Reality. Studies in Ideas and Their History
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374525692
• ISBN 13: 9780374525699
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Isaiah Berlin's The Sense of Reality contains an important body of previously unknown work by one of our century's leading historians of ideas, and one of the finest essayists writing in English. Eight of the nine pieces included here are published for the first time, and their range is characteristically wide: the subjects explored include realism in history; judgement in politics; the history of socialism; the nature and impact of Marxism; the radical cultural revolution instigated by the Romantics; Russian notions of artistic commitment; and the origins and practice of nationalism. The title essay, starting from the impossibility of historians being able to recreate a bygone epoch, is a superb centerpiece.

About the Authors

Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was born in Riga, Latvia, and immigrated to England in 1921. At Oxford, he was a Fellow of New College and of All Souls, and founding president of Wolfson College.

Henry Hardy is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, Isaiah Berlin's principal editor, and one of his literary trustees. He began editing Berlin in the mid-1970s (while a graduate student at Wolfson). Previously an editor at OUP, Hardy has been working full time on Berlin since 1990, and has now edited or co-edited 18 of his books, as well as a four-volume edition of his letters – the last volume of which (Affirming: Letters 1975-1997, co-edited with Mark Pottle) was published in September 2015 by Chatto.