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Russell’s Writings

The Bertrand Russell Research Centre is producing an authoritative, 35-volume edition of Russell’s Collected Papers, published by Routledge.

A subject, title and name guide to over 4,300 of Russell’s publications is in K. Blackwell and H. Ruja, A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), currently under revision with numerous new entries. The Russell Archives have copies of all of Russell’s publications as well as most secondary materials. A digital text by Russell, available on this website, is his last manuscript essay, “1967”.

Electronic versions of many books by Russell are available on the internet, notably at Project Gutenberg (usually in multiple formats) and for borrowing from the Internet Archive. These texts include:

An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897; searchable image)
The Principles of Mathematics (1903)
Principia Mathematica (3 vols., with A.N. Whitehead; 1st edn. only)
The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
Political Ideals (1917)
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919) with a wide choice of formats
Proposed Roads to Freedom (1919; 1st edn.,1918)
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)
The Analysis of Mind (1921)
The Problem of China (1922)
Icarus, or the Future of Science (1924)
Education and the Social Order (1932)
Which Way to Peace?
(1936)

Many of Russell’s books (including the Collected Papers) may be searched (if not read) on Google Books and Amazon.

The chief publisher of Bertrand Russell’s works today is Routledge, with offices in London and New York.Many other titles are being kept in print by Spokesman Books, the publishing wing of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. W.W. Norton still publish The Conquest of Happiness. A source for Russell books in some major library systems and in virtual bookstores is Malaspina Great Books. Cassettes of many speeches and interviews by Bertrand Russell can be purchased from Pacifica Radio Archives. Audio and video of some Russell broadcasts and lectures can also be found at the [Tom] Stanley A/V library on the website of the Bertrand Russell Society.

Nicholas Griffin is the author of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles on Russell and his neutral monism, and of an annotated secondary bibliography of work on Russell (in the Oxford Bibliographies series). Some of the literature on Russell may be borrowed from the Open Library The free online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a lengthy and pertinent entry on Bertrand Russell, and others on Russell’s Paradox and Principia Mathematica, by Andrew Irvine. The main entry on Russell has a chronology of Russell’s life and sections on his logical, philosophical and social influence. Considerable bibliographical assistance is also provided, including a list of Russell’s main published works, and sound clips are available. Bernard Linsky has provided an entry on the notation in PM. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has Rosalind Carey on Russell: Metaphysics and Kevin Klement on Russell’s Paradox and the Russell-Myhill Paradox.

Quotations from, or allegedly from, Russell’s writings may be found on many websites. Usually they are unreferenced. These referenced quotations were suggested by subscribers to Russell-l an old Russell studies listserv. The most recent of several books of Russell quotations is The Quotable Bertrand Russell, edited by Lee Eisler (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1993).