Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. [Translated by C.K. Ogden and F.P. Ramsey.] London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1947.
Offered for sale is a copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in its first edition,* the third impression, of 1947. Copies of the Tractatus printed during Wittgenstein's lifetime are very scarce and highly prized.
This volume, in good condition, was withdrawn from a university library and retains the stamps, stickers, and paste-downs of that institution. The pages are free of annotations, underscores, &c. The blue-green cloth of the back-strip has been nicked near the center and is fraying slightly at the extremities. Where a classification label once stood, a small portion of the gilt on the publisher’s name and device has been lost--some discoloration is in evidence, as are (what may be) small traces of the label. The book opens flat at three places (see figs. 11-13), but the binding will endure with careful handling.
Among the most celebrated works of twentieth-century philosophy, the Tractatus served (long after its publication) as Wittgenstein’s doctoral thesis. An amusing account of the defense is given by Ray Monk: following some desultory interrogation by Russell and Moore, "Wittgenstein ... brought the proceedings to an end by clapping each of his examiners on the shoulder and remarking consolingly: ‘Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it’” (Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, 271).
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I am also selling a copy of the Philosophical Investigations in its first edition, first printing.
* An imperfect version of the Tractatus (which L.W. described as "pirated") was published in German in the Annalen Der Naturphilosophie in 1921, and that edition is sometimes regarded as the first (see Monk, 205).