Corrections to the second 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 then 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 (1998) was therefore considerably revised for its second, updated edition, published twenty-five years later (2023).
In order that students of Berlin should not be misled or travel up blind alleys in the 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 here, for the benefit of those still using the first edition.
The second edition incorporated all the information provided on that web page, 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. Any errors in the second edition that come to the webmaster’s attention will be listed below. If anyone can provide a source for any of the untraced quotations (some of which may come from untranscribed conversations), the webmaster will be grateful to be notified.
Corrections
| Page | Line/note/entry | For | Read |
| 96 | 14 up | World Order | World-Order |
| 181 | 8 up | than she | than her |
| 227 | 2 | Felix Frankfurter, | a friend in the US, |
| 240 | 2 up | six | five |
| 368 | 10 | Ralph | Ralf |
| 373 | after 2 | [insert new entry] | A+ Online supplement to A, bit.ly/A-supp |
| before 6 | [insert new entries] | PIRA Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought, ed. Henry Hardy, introduction by Joshua L. Cherniss (London/Princeton, 2006), 2nd. ed., foreword by William A. Galston (Princeton, 2014) POI The Power of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (London/Princeton, 2000), 2nd. ed., foreword by Avishai Margalit (Princeton, 2013) |
|
| 374 | before 9 | [insert new entry] | IB/IV IB interviewed by |
| before 6 | [insert new entry] | MI/IV Michael Ignatieff interview with | |
| 375 | note 1, 4 | See also | See also his |
| 383 | note 25 | Untraced. | Untraced, but ascribed to the fictional Elya Mendel (based on IB) in Justin Cartwright, The Song Before It is Sung (London, 2007), 216, 127; and cf. ibid. 227. |
| note 44 | Untraced. | Untraced, but at Tape B4: 7 Hampshire says, ‘I am and was almost comically British, I mean to a ludicrous degree’; cf. IB to Bowra, 18 November 1965, ‘No more English Englishman has ever been created’ (B 370). | |
| 385 | note 12 | 337 | F 337 |
| 387 | note 28 | Tape 18: 23; | Tape 18: 9–11; |
| 389 | note 1 | 76 | 80 |
| 393 | note 56 | 77/122. | 77 (Russian version), 122 (German version). |
| 394 | note 7 | Tape 12 | Tape 20 |
| 398 | note 21, 1 | 154/182 | MSB 154/182 |
| 399 | note 36, 2 | 39 | 29 |
| 409 | 1 | 3.3.60 | 4.3.60 |
| 2 | Le Rhinocéros. | Le Rhinocéros, 144c. [roman comma] | |
| 410 | note 6 | MI/IV | IB/IV |
| Hoffenberg | Hoffenberg (President of Wolfson, 1985–93) | ||
| 415 | note 43 | Shielka | Shiela |
| 428 | Lewis, C. I. | World Order | World-Order |