Captain Henry Arthur Hollond (1884–1974), in civilian life, was a legal scholar who had become friendly with BR after being elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1909. The two men also briefly shared rooms at Harvard in spring 1914, where Hollond was studying law and BR was lecturing on logic and epistemology (see SLBR 1: 481). A few months later Hollond enlisted and became a staff officer at British headquarters in France. He remained a Fellow of Trinity for the rest of his life and later served the college as Dean and Vice-Master, as well as holding a university professorship in English law (1943–50). BR’s presumption that Hollond would advocate for him may have been misplaced. When he returned to Trinity in 1944, BR was deeply hurt after seeing a letter indicating that Hollond had not supported him when he was dismissed from his lectureship at the college in 1916. He stewed over this early betrayal until finally initiating a break from Hollond in 1964 (BRACERS 7637).
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.