Brian McGuinness has edited and compiled many collections of writings by Wittgenstein and about him, and his 1988 biography, reissued a few years ago as Young Ludwig, as well as being a fascinating account of Wittgenstein's life up until 1921, also provides one of the best short introductions to the ideas and the style of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In Wittgenstein in Cambridge, a beautifully produced and immaculately edited volume, he collects together a rich mass of letters and other documents. Of particular interest are the letters to and from Piero Sraffa, the Italian economist whose influence Wittgenstein, unusually, was prepared to acknowledge in his later work. There have been previous volumes of this kind (Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters and Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore), and there is some repetition, but it is a tribute to McGuinness's extraordinary industry and enthusiasm that he discovers interesting new material. He writes in his introduction:

Another major change and addition to the volume is that I have now included minutes of meetings and discussions that Wittgenstein attended or led and also documents concerning his official status from time to time. Will future generations know the joy of archives? It is touching to think of the young secretaries of the Trinity Mathematical Society writing their proceedings and Wittgenstein's words into those leather-bound volumes, before going off to calculate the effect of tides off the invasion coast of France.

LRB 29 January 2009 | PDF Download