As I said in the Preface to the original edition, the purpose of this book is to outline the life of Nietzsche as concisely as seems reasonable; his philosophy is considered as a part of his life, and here too the objective is conciseness. What I try to describe is the course of his existence and his thought in their essentials.

I have subjected the book to a thorough revision in which I have corrected what I now perceive as stylistic faults, removed some passages that seem to me misguided or out of date, and amended a few statements of supposed fact which later research has shown not to be factual; but in every essential respect the book has remained the work which first appeared in 1965.

I have eliminated the appendices of the original as being superannuated and have replaced them with a Postscript which in a strictly limited way surveys the changes that have taken place in the publication, reception and appreciation of Nietzsche over the past thirty-five years (part of this Postscript was first published in International Studies in Philosophy, vol. XXII/2, 1990). The original bibliography belongs, of course, to an older generation of Nietzsche study, and I have substituted a new one.

All the passages quoted from Nietzsche's works and letters were newly translated for the original 1965 edition: the works are cited by title or title initials (for which see the list that follows) and chapter and/or section, which are the same for all editions; the letters are cited by date so that they can be referred to in any edition. Little Venice, London