Selected corrections to the first edition of Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life

As the first biographer who used the Isaiah Berlin Papers, before they were deposited in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where they were catalogued and foliated, and before the four-volume edition of Berlin’s letters (2004–15) had appeared, Michael Ignatieff did not have ready access to all the sources that he would have been able to use had he been starting afresh once this process had been completed; he was also under pressure to complete his task within a short time after Berlin’s death on 5 November 1997. The first edition of his biography was therefore considerably revised for its second, updated edition (2023).

In order that students of Berlin should not be misled or travel up blind alleys in the twenty-five years intervening between the two editions, a web page was established to list selected corrections of or additions to the first edition. Much of this list is preserved below, for the benefit of those still using the first edition.

The second edition incorporated all the information provided here, adding references to the Isaiah Berlin Papers and the published letters, as well as to other publications that appeared after the first edition went to press. A separate list of errors and other issues in the second edition is here.

Errors corrected in the paperback edition (2000) appear in this colour. Occasionally they are further corrected in the second edition (2023).

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