Books

First edition in English, first issue, and first edition in book form. 8vo. 189, [1] pp., parallel text in German and English. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt (partial offsetting to endpapers, neat ink inventory number to front pastedown, near contemporary 'Woodbrooke Library' label and later 'Discarded by Woodbrooke Library' rubber stamp to front free endpaper, just a hint of faint spotting to title page, otherwise internally clean and unmarked; the cloth has benefitted from sympathetic conservation under our direction, restoration to tips of spine with loss to two characters in the imprint at foot, removal of old library label from spine leaving faint trace of residue, lower corners only slightly rubbed, still a very good copy, albeit modestly sophisticated). London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, Ltd. One of the great philosophical masterpieces of the twentieth century, the inspiration for the Cambridge school of analytic philosophy of the inter-war years and of the logical positivism of the Vienna circle. Originally published in German the preceding year in the journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie under the title Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, this edition has the English translation facing the original German text. Wittgenstein had been unable to make corrections to the original German edition, and this English-German edition, with the translation supplied by C. K. Ogden and Frank Plumpton Ramsey, is considered the official version. The rare first issue, without the publisher's advertisements at the rear. The book was slow to sell and accordingly the loose sheet of the first edition were only bound up as required, hence later issues of the first edition are often encountered with substantially later advertisements bound at the rear.