Portraits of Bertrand Russell

A collection of valuable and hard-to-find material from friends, colleagues and intellectuals recording the entertaining life and work of Bertrand Russell, one of the most influential and widely known figures of the 20th century.

A founder of modern analytic philosophy, a Nobel Laureate, a political activist and a social critic, Bertrand Russell wrote with style and wit on ethics, politics, educational theory, the history of ideas and religion. Portraits of Bertrand Russell is a major collection of memoirs and reflections on this fascinating 20th-century intellectual.

Featuring portraits from more than 80 figures written between 1872 and 1970, this unique collection brings together the personal recollections of philosophers, students, friends and acquaintances. The set contains personal writings from G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, Lloyd George, J.M. Keynes, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and many others. They capture the power of Russell's ideas and the reach of his thought, while his own accounts of these encounters offer a comparison of how he thought he portrayed himself to others and how he was actually perceived.

Stretching from Russell’s childhood through to Cambridge and covering the First and Second World War as well as his time and influence in the US, China, Russia and Japan, this collection of valuable and hard-to-find material is an indispensable resource to the life and work of Bertrand Russell.