Switch to English Switch to French

The Open University  |   Study at the OU  |   About the OU  |   Research at the OU  |   Search the OU

Listen to this page  |   Accessibility

the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
  RED International Logo

RED Australia logo


RED Canada logo
RED Netherlands logo
RED New Zealand logo

Listings for Author:  

Bertrand Russell

 

Click here to select all entries:

 


  

Bertrand Russell : Essays in Scepticism

'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's The Decline of the West'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : 

'An emancipated working woman like Elizabeth Ring was free to read the works of Freud, Havelock Ellis and Bertrand Russell in the late 1920s, but she was familiar with these books only because her schoolteachers had her exchange them at the Finsbury Public Library'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ring      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : 

'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : Which Way to Peace?

Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell, 14 November 1936: 'Politics are still raging faster and fiercer [...] Leonard is trying to convince the labour party that the policy of isolation is now the only one. Berties book convinced him.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : unknown

4 March 1918: 'I found a silent group at the [1917] Club, all men, & unknown to me, with the exception of Alix who sat still as a statue reading one of Berty Russell's books.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Alix Sargant-Florence      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : unknown

6 June 1918: 'I've seen Alix [...] She is able to conceive the possibility of one day finding some book to read. She has tried Bertie's mathematics, relinquished it, but did not altogether dismiss my suggestion of legal history.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Alix Sargant-Florence      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : On Education

'I had a nice day yesterday lying out under the trees in a deck-chair reading Bertie Russell's "On Education". A good firm book.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : The Problems of Philosophy

'Many thanks. I've just read the first chapter at once to take possession and have laid the book ["The Problems of Philosophy"] aside till Monday -- when the short story will be off my hands.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : Philosophical Essays

'I am glad I read the little book ["The Problems of Philosophy"] before coming to your essays ["Philosophical Essays"]. If in reading the first I felt moving step by step, with delight, on the firmest ground, the other gave me the sense of an enlarged vision in the clearest, the purest atmosphere.' Hence follow another 10 lines of praise and gratitude.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : Analysis of Mind

'As for yourself — I have been dwelling with you mentally for several days between the covers of your book [...].'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Bertrand Russell : The Problem of China

'When your book ["The Problem of China"] arrived we were away for a few days. Perhaps [...] I should have acknowledged the receipt at once. But I preferred to read it before I wrote. Unluckily a very unpleasant affair was sprung on me and absorbed all my thinking energies for a fortnight. I simply did not attempt to open the book till all the worry and flurry was over, and I could give it two clear days.'
[Hence follow three pages of commentary.]

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

 

Click here to select all entries:

 

   
   
Green Turtle Web Design