Dorothy Cousens (née Mackenzie) had been the fiancée of Graeme West, a soldier who had written to BR from the Front about politics. The Diary of a Dead Officer, a collection of his letters and memorabilia edited by Cyril Joad, was published in 1918 by Allen & Unwin. BR got to know Mackenzie after West was killed in action in April 1917 (she, “on the news of his death, became blind for three weeks” [BR’s note, Auto. 2: 71]) and provided some work for her and the man she married, Hilderic Cousens.
Arthur Lindsay Dakyns (1883–1941), a barrister, had been befriended by BR when Dakyns was an Oxford undergraduate and the Russells were living at Bagley Wood. BR once described Dakyns to Gilbert Murray as “a disciple” (16 May 1905, BRACERS 79178) and wrote warmly of him to Lucy Donnelly as “the only person up here (except the Murrays) that I feel as a real friend” (1 Jan. 1906; Auto. 1: 181). During the First World War Dakyns enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in France. BR had become acquainted with the H.
Francis Meynell (1891–1975; knighted 1946), journalist, publisher, and graphic designer, was one of BR’s colleagues in the No-Conscription Fellowship. After being called up in 1916 and refusing to serve, he was detained in military custody at Hounslow Barracks; he was released after a twelve-day hunger strike (see Letter 24). In 1915 Meynell founded the Pelican Press as a publishing outlet for peace propaganda and was also a contributing editor for the Independent Labour Party’s resolutely anti-war Daily Herald.
Maud Clara Frances Burdett (1872–1951) and BR were childhood playmates and had remained in intermittent contact ever since. She was a daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, 7th Baronet, whose family home in Richmond was close to Pembroke Lodge where BR grew up. Sensing her keen intelligence, BR was disappointed when Maud’s conventional mother and sister dissuaded her from entering Newnham College, Cambridge.
The poet and critic Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) was a student of BR’s at Harvard in 1914. BR had sensed his ability, especially “a certain exquisiteness of appreciation” (to Lucy Donnelly, 11 May 1914; SLBR 1: 491), but did not see a genius in embryo. After Eliot travelled to England later the same year, to study philosophy at Oxford under H.H. Joachim, BR became something of a father figure to the younger man. He also befriended Eliot’s (English) wife, Vivienne, whom he had hastily married in 1915 and with whom BR may have had an affair the following year.
Mary Agnes (“Molly”) Hamilton (1882–1966), socialist peace campaigner, novelist and journalist, became one of the first members of the Union of Democratic Control in August 1914. She was acquainted with both Ottoline and the pacifist literary circle around her at Garsington Manor. After the war Hamilton served for a time as deputy-editor of the Independent Labour Party weekly, The New Leader, and was briefly (1929–31) Labour M.P.
Eric Harold Neville (1889–1961) was a Cambridge mathematician who specialized in differential and analytical geometry. Although unfit for military service, he publicly affirmed his pacifist opposition to the First World War, which may have resulted in Trinity College declining to renew his fellowship in 1919. Subsequently he became chair of mathematics at University College, Reading.
Margaret Llewelyn Davies (1861–1944), sister of BR’s close Cambridge friends Crompton and Theodore Llewelyn Davies; she was a socialist and feminist who corresponded with BR for many years on public issues.
(Charles Otto) Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), literary critic, Cambridge Apostle, and a friend of BR’s since their Trinity College days in the 1890s. MacCarthy edited the Memoir (1910)of Lady John Russell.
John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician. In 1908 he became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1910 he succeeded Whitehead as college lecturer in mathematics and began his extraordinarily fruitful, 35-year collaboration with G.H. Hardy. During the First World War he worked on ballistics for the British Army. He and BR were to share Newlands farm, near Lulworth, during the summer of 1919.
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.