The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. 1872-1914; 1914-1944; 1944-1967.

First editions, first impressions. Three volumes. 8vo. 230, [2]; 268; 232, pp., photographic frontispiece portraits to each volume with numerous other illustrations throughout. Original burgundy cloth, spines lettered in gilt, dust jackets (Vols. 2 & 3 price clipped, bookplates to front pastedowns of each volume, bookseller's label to front pastedown of Vol. 2, some occasional spotting, otherwise a very good, bright set). London, George Allen & Unwin. 

First editions of all three volumes of Bertrand Russell's autobiography, "widely, and justly, considered a masterpiece", extracts from which would be "broadcast as radio talks and published as Portraits from Memory in 1956, and three years later Russell published a separate intellectual autobiography, My Philosophical Development" (ODNB). In contemporary review in the Guardian, Geoffrey Moorhouse would write that Russell's Autobiography "measures part of the fantastic distance he has already come. This man actually dined with Gladstone, who uttered just one sentence to young Russell: 'This is a very good port they have given me, but why have they given it me in a claret glass?'"

Stock Code: 232583