The Attic was the nickname of the flat at 6 Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1, rented by Colette and her husband, Miles Malleson. The house which contained this flat is no longer standing. “The spacious and elegant facades of Mecklenburgh Square began to be demolished in 1950. The houses on the north side were banged into dust in 1958. The New Attic was entirely demolished” (“Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, p. 109; typescript in RA).
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.