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A personal and intimate collection of letters by Wittgenstein to his siblings, written over the course of his life.

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Translated into English for the first time, the letters collected here bring to life one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
In letters written over forty years, we see how his ideas and relationships developed during his time as a prisoner of war, a school teacher, an architect and throughout his years at Cambridge.

Always frank and often brutally honest, these letters between Wittgenstein, his brother Paul and his three sisters, Hermine, Margaret and Helene are filled with a familiarity and an intimacy. They allow us to enter the bygone world of an extraordinary family, revealing a side of Wittgenstein we have never seen before.

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Introduction, Brian McGuinness
Acknowledgements

Ludwig´s Early Letters
1908

The War Years
August 1914-April 1918

Captivity
November 1918-September 1919

The Tractatus and the elementary school years
October 1920-March 1926

A Viennese intermezzo
a letter from late 1928?

Cambridge
January 1929-February 1938 121

The Anschluss and World War Two
March 1938-May 1945 172

Ludwig´s last letters
January 1946-April 1951

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Anyone interested in the period, the Wittgenstein family, or the lost art of letter writing will find this a delightful read. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. CHOICE

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McGuinness, Brian
Brian McGuinness is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Siena, Italy. Past publications include the translation of Wittgenstein´s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (with David Pears) and A Life of Wittgenstein (Volume 1, Young Ludwig, 1988).

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