The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell was published in three volumes: Volume I (1872–1914) in 1967, Volume II (1914–1944) in 1968, and Volume III (1944–1967) in 1969, all by Allen and Unwin. Russell was in his mid-nineties when the final volume appeared, and the autobiography covers what is arguably the most eventful intellectual life of the twentieth century.
The prologue — “What I Have Lived For” — is one of the most quoted passages in English autobiography: “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.” The three passions organize the narrative that follows: his emotional life (four marriages, numerous affairs, the loneliness of his orphaned childhood raised by his Victorian grandmother); his intellectual life (Cambridge, Whitehead, the Principia, the revolution in philosophy); and his political life (pacifism during World War I, the Committee of 100, nuclear disarmament).
Volume I covers his birth into the Victorian aristocracy (his grandfather Lord John Russell was twice Prime Minister), his austere childhood, his Cambridge years, his marriage to Alys Pearsall Smith, the creation of Principia Mathematica, and the philosophical work that made him famous. Volume II covers the Great War (during which he was imprisoned for pacifist activities), his time in China and Russia, his school-running experiments, and his difficult years in America during World War II. Volume III covers the postwar period, the Nobel Prize, his campaigning against nuclear weapons, and the founding of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
The autobiography includes extensive correspondence — letters to and from Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Conrad, Lawrence, Eliot, and dozens of other significant figures — and Russell’s selections are generous and revealing. His prose is characteristically lucid: even in his nineties, his sentences are precise, his judgments confident, and his capacity for self-criticism (limited but genuine) distinguishes the work from mere self-congratulation.
Collecting The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
First edition (Allen and Unwin, London, 1967–1969): Three volumes, cloth with dust jackets.
Market values:
- Complete first edition set, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good set: $75–$200
- Volume I alone, fine/fine: $50–$100
- Signed: $500–$1,500