Op = Op The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: Private Years 1884-1914 v. 1 – Nicholas Griffin (Edited By)

‘When we are young we have most of us a spring of enthusiasm and hope and self-confidence which helps us through periods of dullness: but later in life, if the dullness settles down as the normal state of things, it must become almost impossible to preserve our energy and our generosity. And nothing on earth makes people so unsympathetic as solitude.’ So wrote Bertrand Russell in 1893 to the woman who was to become his first wife. Those who knew Russell at the turn of the century referred to him as ‘the Day…