Corrections to The Crooked Timber of Humanity

Corrections to 2nd edition

The second edition (2013) was completely revised throughout, and translations should be made from this edition, with the additional corrections listed below.

Page Line For Read
i 11 Marx, Marx, The Age of Enlightenment, [roman commas]
2–1 up the first three […] remaining volume. all those listed above, and a
four-volume edition of his letters. He is co-editor of The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin (2007), editor of The Book of Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin (2009), and author of In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure (2018).
ii 2–3 The Infinities The Singularities and The Lock-Up.
4 for the Irish Times [delete]
2 up [insert below:] <https://isaiah-berlin.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/>
<https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/>
iii [add at end:] Affirming: Letters 1975–1997
iv [a frontispiece is available on request]
vi 9 [add line after:] Reprinted with corrections 2023
11 1992, 1992
13 2004, 2013 © The Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2004, 2013
14 1990, 1990, 1997,
ix 2 up [add entries
after this line,
ranging page nos
right:]
Russell’s History of Philosophy   279
Reply to Robert Kocis   303
Reply to Ronald J. McKinney   313
Letters   319
xv 11 sympathising sympathising with
xix note 2, 3 New York, 1979) New York, 1979; 2nd ed., Princeton, 2013)
note 1, 5 2001) 2001; 3rd further expanded ed., London and Princeton, 2014)
note 1, 6 1991. 1991 (2nd ed., Princeton and London, 2013).
note 3, 3 2000). 2000; 2nd ed., Princeton and London, 2013).
note 4, 2–3 on the […] Library’, in the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library
note 4, 4 />. /> and in interactive form on the official website of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, Isaiah Berlin Online, <https://isaiah-berlin.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/>.
note 5 2000). 2000; 2nd ed., Princeton, 2013).
xx note 1, 4 1997), 1997; 2nd ed., Princeton, 2019),
note 1, 5 2002), 2002; 2nd ed., Princeton, 2014),
note 1, 6 2004), 2004; 2nd. ed., Washington, 2016),
xxi 19 21November 21 November
xxv after last line [add new line:] (with later updates)
after new last line [add postcript:]
P O S T S C R I P T

I am grateful to Professor Reiji Matsumoto, translator into Japanese of ‘Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism’, for drawing my attention to an unclarity in note 1 to p. 136. I should have made explicit that only the first ten words of the quotation are based on Montesquieu, who wrote ‘Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir de fruit, ils coupent l'arbre au pied, et cuillent le fruit’ (‘When the savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree at its base and pick it’); this in turn is based on a letter of 9 November 1712 from père Gabriel Marest to père Germon, Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des missions étrangères, par quelques missionaires de la Compagnie de Jésus (Paris, 1702–76) xi 315 (a brief reference, but not the quotation, is given in a note in De l’esprit des lois present since the first edition): ‘Nos sauvages ne sont pas accoustumer à cuiller le fruit aux arbres; ils croyent faire mieux d’abattre les arbres mêmes’ (‘Our savages are not used to picking fruit from trees; they think it better to cut down the trees themselves’). So Maistre is in fact, perhaps unwittingly (did he look up the passage?) and at one remove, echoing the words of Marest. The rest of the remarks by Maistre quoted here by IB may have similar origins, but I have not found them.
4 10 up moon sun
11 19 sympathising sympathising with
39 11 up society, society
44 13 superpersonal super-personal
103 5 Burke, Chateaubriand Chateaubriand
119 note 1, 1 v 32–3 iv 32–4
129 14 Blut and Boden Blut und Boden
136 note 1 13. 13, and xxv above.
157 note 2 op. cit. Oeuvres complètes
171 2 up only used the term used the term only
236 note 2 op. loc.
, xxix 366 [delete]
254 note 2, 2 1981– 1981–2015
313 7 3 4
note 1, 2 no. 4 no. 3
321 note 1 264/290 306/4

Corrections to 1st edition

The superseded lists below may be of use to owners of the first edition (1990). They include (but are not exhausted by) the corrections made in later impressions of that edition.

Errors in first (1990) Murray impression

Page Line Correction / For Read
v 5 carved built
99 2 delete ‘Herder’
100 15 Maistre is usually included in the last category by historians. Historians usually include Maistre among the conservatives.
111 26–7 exterminates him who will exterminate will exterminate him who exterminates
127 13–16 In a simpler and no doubt much cruder form, but in substance precisely as Maistre taught it, it is the heart of all totalitarian doctrines. In practice if not in theory (at times offered in a transparently false scientific guise), Maistre's deeply pessimistic vision is the heart of the totalitarianisms, of both left and right, of our terrible century.
130 16 mystic mystic,
156 12 kings of Savoy, whom House of Savoy, which
157 2 up Le Les
165 1 where whence

Errors in first and second (1990) Murray impressions

Page Line Correction / For Read
58 7 Gottlob Gottlieb
111 25 skin to make a whip for his child tusks to make a toy for a child
157 n. 1, 11 Countess beautiful
266 s.v. Fichte Gottlob Gottlieb

Errors in first, second and third (1991) Murray impressions

Page Line Correction / For Read
v 9 1910 1900
23. 23; see also p. xi below
x 10 On the The
8 7 up La scienza Scienza
19 5–4 up in the novel […] world ‘has been, is and will be beautiful’
111 4 dome domain
117 8 quarters breaks on the wheel
11 catches carries off
190 5–6 Karl Moor Karl Moor
199 10 men man
213 12 Krise Krisen
218 6 nature is nature’s
220 11 up proud pure
221 13 humour honour
227 3–5 ‘We must […] annex to it.’ We must be a ‘quickening source of life’, not an ‘echo’ of it or an ‘annex’ to it.
10 disorder of our race … man is disorders of our race – man is
13–14 delete quotation marks
228 14 up delete quotation marks
231 11–9 up delete all quotation marks
237 11 up and that this leads a fallacy that leads
242 8–9 past […] early past. Armed Fichteans will appear … restrained neither by fear nor by greed … like those early
274 s.v. Schiller 220–2 ... 190; 190, 220–2, 230, 246, 251;

Last updated 10 August 2023