Synopses & Reviews
Considering that much of his life was spent in poverty and ill health, it is something of a miracle that in only forty-six years George Orwell managed to publish ten books and two collections of essays. Here, in four fat volumes, is the best selection of his non-fiction available, a trove of letters, essays, reviews, and journalism that is breathtaking in its scope and eclectic passions. Orwell had something to say about just about everyone and everything. His letters to such luminaries as Julian Symons, Anthony Powell, Arthur Koestler, and Cyril Connolly are poignant and personal. His essays, covering everything from "English Cooking" to "Literature and Totalitarianism," are memorable, and his books reviews (Hitler's Mein Kampf, Mumford's Herman Melville, Miller's Black Spring, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield to name just a few) are among the most lucid and intelligent ever written. From 1943 to l945, he wrote a regular column for the Tribune, a left wing weekly, entitled "As I Please." His observations about life in Britain during the war embraced everything from anti-American sentiment to the history of domestic appliances.
Synopsis
"It is an astonishing tribute to Orwell's gifts as a natural, unaffected writer that, although the historical events he is unfolding are all too bitterly familiar, the reader turns the page as though he did not know what was going to happen. Here, then, is a social, literary, and political history... which, while being intensely personal never forgets its allegiance to objective truth." --The Economist
George Orwell is without question one of the most important writers of the 20th century. The adjective Orwellian and terms such as doublethink, Big Brother, thought police, memory hole, Newspeak, or unperson, are all due to him, as resonant today as in his time. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, in four volumes, is the best selection of his nonfiction available. Written between 1920 and 1950, here is a trove of letters, essays, reviews, and journalism that is breathtaking in its scope, the force of intellect, and eclectic passions. Orwell had something to say about just about everyone and everything. His letters to such luminaries as Julian Symons, Anthony Powell, Arthur Koestler, and Cyril Connolly are poignant and personal. His essays, covering everything from "English Cooking" to "Literature and Totalitarianism," are memorably insightful, and his books reviews (Hitler's Mein Kampf, Mumford's Herman Melville, Miller's Black Spring, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, to name just a few) are among the most lucid and intelligent ever written. This is a collection that will expand anyone's understanding of the writer and of the world he so profoundly understood.
Synopsis
Witnessing two kinds of executions in Burma ("A Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant") and firing salvos at British colonialism ("How a Nation is Exploited"), being down and out in Paris ("A Day in the Life of a Tramp") and bookselling in Hampstead ("Bookshop Memories"), Orwell's breadth of experience, compassion, and political insight make his early essays among his best. It was also during this period that Orwell wrote and published Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier (originally published for the Left Book Club), and the memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia. This first volume of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, spanning two decade of nonfiction writing and letters, contains some of the most remarkable writing of Orwell's entire career.
Synopsis
Essays, journalism and essays by the indispensable George Orwell, spanning the first two decades of his writing career. Even many years after his death, the more we read of Orwell, the more clearly we can think about our world and ourselves.
Orwell's breadth of experience, compassion, and political insight make his early essays among his best. Here he witnesses two kinds of executions in Burma ("A Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant"), fires salvos at British colonialism ("How a Nation is Exploited"), copes with poverty in Paris ("A Day in the Life of a Tramp"), and works in a bookshop in Hampstead ("Bookshop Memories").
It was also during this period that Orwell wrote and published Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier (originally published for the Left Book Club), and the memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia.
This first volume of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters contains some of the most remarkable writing of Orwell's entire career and will be enjoyed by anyone who believes that words can go a long way toward changing the world.