ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses biography and canon formation in the history of analytic philosophy. Drawing on the correspondence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s literary executors, it details several discursive shifts in the authoritative narrative of the philosopher’s intellectual life. The essay assesses each of these shifts as they occurred in print and their cumulative effect on late-twentieth-century portrayals of Wittgenstein’s queerness as a Cambridge don. It also suggests a new direction in philosophical historians’ discussions of ‘doing analytic philosophy historically’, one that attends to the presence of asymmetrical relations between teachers and their male protégés in the English ancient university before 1945 and in Wittgenstein’s life and work.
