WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig, Notebooks 1914–1916, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, edited by G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford), 1961 [first edition]

8vo; pp. vi, 131 [but [1]–91 paginated once only for each facing page]

Very good condition: dust jacket a little soiled, more so to the spine; internally very good; faint spotting to edges

The key to the Tractatus. Most of Wittgenstein’s notebooks were destroyed on his instruction in 1950, but fortuitously three notebooks survived in his sister’s house in Vienna, dating from the period leading up to the composition of the Tractatus. Alongside the first two of these, in translation by Anscombe, the editors include a group of notes written in 1913 and given to Bertrand Russell, another set dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway in 1914, and passages relevant to the Tractatus taken from Wittgenstein’s letters to Russell.

This copy, in addition to being in excellent condition, is unusual in retaining the original sales invoice, dated 4 February 1961, from Bowes & Bowes in Cambridge, issued to a Cambridge student (and member of the croquet Varsity team).