Bertrand Russell: References & Edit History

Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell, rev. ed. (1978), is the standard biography, though it is marred to some extent by Clark’s lack of interest in philosophy. Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1996), provides more detail than Clark’s book, particularly on Russell’s intellectual development. Alan Ryan, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life (1988, reissued 1993), is a sympathetic, though not especially detailed, survey of Russell’s political development.

Among Russell’s own works, the first volume of Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vol. (1967–69), is his literary masterpiece: honest, self-searching, and compellingly written. A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Russell’s most popular work, is brilliant and witty but, from a scholarly point of view, maddeningly partial and opinionated. Logic and Knowledge, ed. by Robert Charles Marsh (1956), is an invaluable collection of Russell’s most important essays, including “On Denoting.” My Philosophical Development (1959) includes the definitive statement of Russell’s “retreat from Pythagoras.” Also significant is The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, ed. by Nicholas Griffin, of which vol. 1, The Private Years, 1884–1914 (1992), is dominated by love letters to Alys and Morrell, though it also includes some fascinating correspondence with G.E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, and Alfred North Whitehead, among others.