| Auto. | The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. 3 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967–69. |
| B&R | A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell. Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja with the assistance of Bernd P. Frohmann, John G. Slater and Sheila Turcon. 3 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. |
| BRACERS | Bertrand Russell Archives Catalogue Entry and Research System |
| C.O. | Conscientious Objector |
| HWP | A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945. |
| NCF | No-Conscription Fellowship |
| Papers | The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. 18 vols. to date. London and New York: Routledge, 1983–. |
| SLBR | The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell. Ed. Nicholas Griffin, assisted by Alison Roberts Miculan. 2 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 1994, 2001. |
This edition of Russell’s prison letters is fully annotated with letter images and reliable texts — the texts edited anew in the case of the few letters already published. The texts are printed as Russell wrote them. There are exceptions for clarity: the expansion of lower-case abbreviations, italics for some logical symbols, italics or quote marks for publications, and correction of misspelled words that aren’t names (mistakes in names can be important). See the textual notes and images for individual letters. Sources are given for the originals of the letters edited here, as well as citations of any previous publications thereof.
There are three frequently appearing bibliographical references: “Papers” is The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (Routledge, 18 vols. to date); “Auto.”, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967–69); “SLBR”, The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, ed. N. Griffin, 2 vols. (London: Penguin, 1992, 2001).
Edited by Kenneth Blackwell, Andrew G. Bone, Nicholas Griffin and Sheila Turcon.
Arlene Duncan, editorial assistant and typesetter.
Student research assistants: Geneva Gillis, Graeme Lavender, Jaskaran Basuita.
Our thanks to McMaster University Library for generously funding the development of this website for The Collected Letters of Bertrand Russell and to the Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections for providing scans of documents in its care.
Bertrand Russell’s letters © McMaster University, 2018.