Brixton Letter 32
BR to George Allen & Unwin Ltd. (via Frank Russell)
July 4, 1918
- TLS
- Reading
- Edited by
Kenneth Blackwell
Andrew G. Bone
Nicholas Griffin
Sheila Turcon
Cite The Collected Letters of Bertrand Russell, https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/brixton-letter-32
BRACERS 48710
<letterhead>1
57 GORDON SQUARE,
LONDON, W. C. 1.
4 July 1918.
Messrs. George Allen & Unwin
40 Museum Street
W.C.1.
Dear Sirs,
Mr. Bertrand Russell says you are to have the contract with Lippincott,2 and we are at present searching for it here but have not yet found it. He quite agrees that you ought to get 10% on the negotiations. He says he will do the index to Roads to Freedom3 himself, so perhaps you could post a copy of the proofs direct to him at the prison for that purpose. You simply address it to Brixton Prison. S.W. 2.
Mr Russell gave me the following message at the prison yesterday — “He is particularly anxious that the publication here should not in any event be delayed, and he says if you are legally free to proceed you might publish here; when the American copyright would lapse, then the Lippincott rights would cease, and the Century4 Company if willing to publish would also be willing to pay Royalties. At any rate willingness to adopt this course can be used to make Lippincott reasonable. Do not on any account delay publication here.”
He also handed me the Notice5 you wanted for the purpose of announcement for the other new book.
Yours faithfully,
Russell
Encl.
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from the Russell Archives’ photocopy of the typed, single-sheet, signed original in the Allen & Unwin archive at the University of Reading.
- 2
contract with Lippincott Despite efforts by Frank and suggestions from BR, the contract could not be located among the latter’s papers at Gordon Square. However, a typed carbon copy, with seals, is in the Russell Archives (BRACERS 70492) and is dated 11 October 1917.
- 3
index to Roads to Freedom By 8 July 1918 (Letter 34) BR had sent his index to Unwin. A Russellian index may have humorous entries: this one includes “Chewing-gum” and “Button-hooks”.
- 4
Lippincott … Century To replace Lippincott, BR favoured Century, the publisher of Why Men Fight (1917), the American edition of Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916). This publisher, having commissioned the book, declined to publish it in wartime after seeing the typescript.
- 5
the Notice The “other new book” was Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, now completed in manuscript and awaiting typing by Miss Kyle. The “notice”, blurb, or descriptive paragraph (Frank Russell used the latter term in a letter of 22 June 1918 to Unwin, BRACERS 48707), is taken from the original dust-jacket: “This book is intended for those who have no previous acquaintance with the topics of which it treats, and no more knowledge of mathematics than can be acquired at a primary school or even at Eton. It sets forth in elementary form the logical definition of number, the analysis of the notion of order, the modern doctrine of the infinite, and the theory of descriptions and classes as symbolic fictions. The more controversial and uncertain aspects of the subject are subordinated to those which can by now be regarded as acquired scientific knowledge. These are explained without the use of symbols, but in such a way as to give readers a general understanding of the methods and purposes of mathematical logic, which, it is hoped, will be of interest not only to those who wish to proceed to a more serious study of the subject, but also to that wider circle who feel a desire to know the bearings of this important modern science.” The book was published in March 1919 by Allen & Unwin.
57 Gordon Square
The London home of BR’s brother, Frank, 57 Gordon Square is in Bloomsbury. BR lived there, when he was in London, from August 1916 to April 1918, with the exception of January and part of February 1917.
Brixton Prison
Located in southwest London Brixton is the capital’s oldest prison. It opened in 1820 as the Surrey House of Correction for minor offenders of both sexes, but became a women-only convict prison in the 1850s. Brixton was a military prison from 1882 until 1898, after which it served as a “local” prison for male offenders sentenced to two years or less, and as London’s main remand centre for those in custody awaiting trial. The prison could hold up to 800 inmates. Originally under local authority jurisdiction, local prisons were transferred to Home Office control in 1878 in an attempt to establish uniform conditions of confinement. These facilities were distinct from “convict” prisons reserved for more serious or repeat offenders sentenced to longer terms of penal servitude.
Eva Kyle
Eva Kyle ran a typing service. She did work for the No-Conscription Fellowship and took BR’s dictation of his book, Roads to Freedom, in the early months of 1918. He annotated a letter from her: “She was an admirable typist but very fat. We all agreed that she was worth her weight in gold, though that was saying a great deal.” Her prison letter to him is clever and amusing. She typed his major prison writings and apologized for the amount of the invoice when he emerged.
Frank Russell
John Francis (“Frank”) Stanley Russell (1865–1931; 2nd Earl Russell from 1878), BR’s older brother. Author of Lay Sermons (1902), Divorce (1912), and My Life and Adventures (1923). BR remembered Frank bullying him as a child and as having the character and appearance of a Stanley, but also as giving him his first geometry lessons (Auto. 1: 26, 36). He was accomplished in many fields: sailor, electrician, house builder, pioneer motorist, local politician, lawyer, businessman and company director, and (later) constructive junior member of the second Labour Government. Frank was married three times. The first marriage involved serious legal actions by and against his wife and her mother, but a previous scandal, which ended his career at Oxford, had an overshadowing effect on his life (see Ruth Derham, “‘A Very Improper Friend’: the Influence of Jowett and Oxford on Frank Russell”, Russell 37 [2017]: 271–87). The second marriage was to Mollie Sommerville (see Ian Watson, “Mollie, Countess Russell”, Russell 23 [2003]: 65–8). The third was to Elizabeth, Countess von Arnim. Despite difficulties with him, BR declared from prison: “No prisoner can ever have had such a helpful brother” (Letter 20).
George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., founded by Stanley Unwin in 1914, was BR’s chief British publisher, had published Principles of Social Reconstruction in 1916, and was in the process of publishing Roads to Freedom (1918) while BR was in Brixton.
Stanley Unwin
Stanley Unwin (1884–1968; knighted in 1946) became, in the course of a long business career, an influential figure in British publishing and, indeed, the book trade globally — for which he lobbied persistently for the removal of fiscal and bureaucratic impediments to the sale of printed matter (see his The Truth about a Publisher: an Autobiographical Record [London: Allen & Unwin, 1960], pp. 294–304). In 1916 Principles of Social Reconstruction became the first of many BR titles to appear under the imprint of Allen & Unwin, with which his name as an author is most closely associated. Along with G.D.H. Cole, R.H. Tawney and Harold Laski, BR was notable among several writers of the Left on the publishing house’s increasingly impressive list of authors. Unwin himself was a committed pacifist who conscientiously objected to the First World War but chose to serve as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment. With occasional departures, BR remained with the company for the rest of his life (and posthumously), while Unwin also acted for him as literary agent with book publishers in most overseas markets.
The J.B. Lippincott Company
J.B. Lippincott Company, founded in 1836, was one of the world’s largest publishers. How it came to approach BR in 1917 is unknown, but it followed upon the success of the Century Company’s US publication of Why Men Fight (1917), the retitled Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916). See Letter 21, note 6.