CONDITION USED GOOD, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL 1872-1914, HARDCOVER,1967

This autobiography stretches back nearly a century. One of Earl Russell’s earliest memories is of his grandfather recounting a visit to Napoleon on the island of Elba. A descendant of one of England’s most illustrious families, Russell was a great thinker in his own right—philosopher, mathematician, scientist, educationist, politician, and a writer known for his unparalleled clarity and style. Renowned for his advanced views on many controversial issues, Russell’s thought and character have left a profound mark on generations. Ideas for which he was once an outcast are now widely accepted, and his life’s work has been honored with both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize.

Over ninety-four years of varied activity, Russell’s circle of friendships was vast. This first volume of his autobiography (covering up to 1914) features figures such as his distinguished grandparents, his unusual parents Lord and Lady Amberley, his brother Frank, and Uncle Rollo. Also appearing are Gladstone, Browning, philosophers like Whitehead, Moore, and Bradley, and other notable contemporaries such as the Trevelyans, the Webbs, Shaw, Pearsall Smith, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, and Ottoline Morrell. Reading this is like viewing a panoramic portrait of an entire era of English social and intellectual life. A concluding volume will follow.

In the prologue, Russell writes: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.” This candid and uninhibited autobiography may well become a classic, comparable to Rousseau’s Confessions.