George Orwell Novels

The Orwell Reader (Part 2)

admin — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:01:16 +0000

A collection of some of George Orwell’s best essays: The Spike (1931) Bookshop Memories (1936) Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937) Charles Dickens (1940) Boys’ Weeklies (1940) The Art of Donald McGill (1941) Mark Twain — The Licensed Jester (1943) Antisemitism in Britain (1945) Notes on Nationalism (1945) A Nice Cup of Tea (1946) Decline of the English Murder (1946) Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947) ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ For other Orwell essays and related articles please use the search box and check the essays category.

Orwell shot through throat by a sniper (20 May 1937)

admin — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:01:20 +0000

George Orwell (Eric Blair) was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20 May 1937. He discusses the incident in Homage to Catalonia. His wife (Eileen Blair) sent a telegram from Barcelona at noon on 24 May 1937 to Orwell’s parents in Southwold. This read: “Eric slightly wounded progress excellent sends love no need for anxiety Eileen.” This reached Southwold just after 2:00 p.m. Orwell’s commandant, George Kopp, wrote a report on his condition on 31 May and 1 June 1937. When this report was lost, Kopp wrote another, for Dr. Laurence O’Shaughnessy, Orwell’s brother-in-law, dated “Barcelona, the 10th. of June 1937″. Kopp illustrated his report with a drawing of the bullet’s path through Orwell’s throat. Kopp’s report and drawing are reprinted below. Note: Spelling errors and typos in Kopp’s report have not been corrected. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Eric was wounded the 20th of May at 5 a.m. The bullet entered the neck just under the larynx, slightly at the left side of it’s vertical axis and went out at the dorsal right side of the neck’s base. It was a normal 7 mm bore, copper-plated Spanish Mauser bullet, shot from a distance of some 175 yards. At this [...]

Letter from Eileen Blair in Barcelona to her brother Dr. Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy (May 1937)

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:45:19 +0000

10 Rambla de los Estudios, Barcelona. 1 May 1937 Dear Eric, You have a hard life. I mean to write to Mother with the news, but there are some business matters. Now I think of these, they’re inextricably connected with the news so Mother must share this letter. George is here on leave. He arrived completely ragged, almost barefoot, a little lousy, dark brown, & looking really very well. For the previous 12 hours he had been in trains consuming anis, muscatel out of anis bottles, sardines & chocolate. In Barcelona food is plentiful at the moment but there is nothing plain. So it is not surprising that he ceased to be well. Now after two days in bed he is really cured but still persuadable so having a ‘quiet day’. This is the day to have on May 1st. They were asked to report at the barracks, but he isn’t well enough & has already applied for his discharge papers so he hasn’t gone. The rest of the contingent never thought of going. When the discharge is through he will probably join the International Brigade. Of course we—perhaps particularly I—are politically suspect but we told all the truth to [...]

Letter from George Orwell at the BBC to E. M. Forster (14 April 1942)

admin — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:10:45 +0000

14 April 1942 Dear Mr. Forster, Many thanks for your letter. As to the questionnaire by the BBC which you mention,1 I don’t think it ever bore much fruit, but I am finding out what replies did come in and will let you have any material which looks as if it might be useful. I think it would be a good idea to more or less wrap your talk round Anand’s novel and the Indian number of “Life & Letters”. “Indian Writing” could be mentioned in the same connection, and perhaps also the recent selection of Kipling’s poems with Eliot’s introduction. A book which is more or less appropos but unfortunately must not be mentioned is K. S. Shelvankar’s “The Problem of India”.2 This has been banned in India and if we refer to it the censorship will cut it out. If you could delicately hint that people here are very interested in English-language Indian writers such as Ahmed Ali,3 etc. it would be a good propaganda point. It might even be worth mentioning that people are becoming more interested in Indian painting, and “Horizon” are shortly publishing an article by an Indian on Bengali folk painting.4 One minor cause of [...]

Common Lodging Houses (September 1932)

admin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:00:49 +0000

The New Statesman and Nation, 3 September 1932 Common lodging houses, of which there are several hundred in London, are night-shelters specially licensed by the LCC.1 They are intended for people who cannot afford regular lodgings, and in effect they are extremely cheap hotels. It is hard to estimate the lodging-house population, which varies continually, but it always runs into tens of thousands, and in the winter months probably approaches fifty thousand. Considering that they house so many people and that most of them are in an extraordinarily bad state, common lodging houses do not get the attention they deserve. To judge the value of the LCC legislation on this subject, one must realise what life in a common lodging house is like. The average lodging house (“doss house”, it used to be called) consists of a number of dormitories, and a kitchen, always subterranean, which also serves as a sitting-room. The conditions in these places, especially in southern quarters such as Southwark or Bermondsey, are disgusting. The dormitories are horrible fetid dens, packed with anything up to a hundred men, and furnished with beds a good deal inferior to those in a London casual ward. Normally these beds are [...]

Telling the Russians about Orwell

admin — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 04:01:15 +0000

Gleb Struve (1898-1985), a scholar and specialist on Soviet literature, was at the School of Slavonic Studies, London University, in 1944. He wrote to Orwell and congratulated him on his piece in the Tribune column about Soviet falsification of history. They met and corresponded. It was Struve who introduced Orwell to Zamyatin’s futurist novel We, which is one of the many sources of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Struve is far more clear than many literary critics that Nineteen Eighty-Four is primarily a satire – he believed the people in Eastern Europe and Russia would find it amusing. Struve wrote this tribute to Orwell for a Russian language journal, New Russian Wind, 19 February 1950. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ The death of the English writer, George Orwell, three weeks ago, deserves a mention in the Russian Press. His fame comes from writing a satire on the evolution of the Soviet Union [Animal Farm, printed in a Russian translation in the paper Possev] and his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which was printed last year and which I wrote about in New Russian Wind (10 July 1949). I had the occasion to meet him soon after the end of the war, when he returned from a tour [...]

Through a Glass, Rosily

admin — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:01:31 +0000

Tribune, 23 November 1945 The recent article by Tribune’s Vienna correspondent provoked a spate of angry letters which, besides calling him a fool and a liar and making other charges of what one might call a routine nature, also carried the very serious implication that he ought to have kept silent even if he knew that he was speaking the truth. He himself made a brief answer in Tribune, but the question involved is so important that it is worth discussing it at greater length. Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticises A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticise: or at least criticise “constructively,” which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist. Now, if one divides the world into A and B and assumes that A represents progress and B reaction, it is just arguable that no [...]

Announcement of Orwell’s engagement to Sonia Brownell (September 1949)

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:15:55 +0000

17 September 1949 The Star reported: A specialist’s verdict will decide whether fair-haired Miss Sonia Brownell,1 engaged to novelist George Orwell, will have a bedside wedding in hospital. Mr Orwell who has been ill for two years is now in University College Hospital. He is expected to be there for at least another three months but Miss Brownell told me today: “If the doctors say he is well enough we shall be married within the next few weeks.” Blue-eyed 30-year-old Miss Brownell, assistant editor of the literary magazine Horizon, became engaged to Mr Orwell some two months ago but their engagement was not disclosed until today. They have known each other for five years. In her Bedford-square office today Miss Brownell, in a white lace-work blouse and grey flannel skirt, was wearing her Italian engagement ring of ornamental design with rubies, diamonds and an emerald. She chose it herself because she thought it pretty. Her hope is that her husband-to-be—his real name is Eric Blair—will be well enough to leave hospital so that they can go abroad early in the new year. * The Daily Mail story referred to Orwell as the “brilliant satirical novelist whose last book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, [...]

Orwell’s notes for essay on Evelyn Waugh (1949)

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:15:25 +0000

These notes for an essay on Evelyn Waugh were written by Orwell in his last Literary Notebook. The ellipses seen below are Orwell’s. He said: “I hope it’s dipsomania. That is simply a great misfortune that we must all help him bear. What I used to fear was that he just got drunk deliberately when he liked & because he liked.” “That’s exactly what he did—what we both did. It’s what he does with me now. I can keep him to that, if only your mother would trust me. If you worry him with keepers & cures he’ll be a physical wreck in a few years.” “There’s nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There’s no moral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or live to walk ten miles at eighty.” “Wrong,” I said. “Moral obligation—now …. etc. (“Brideshead Revisited.”) Let me, then, warn the reader that I was a Conservative when I went to Mexico & that everything I saw there strengthened my opinions. I believe that man is, by nature, an exile & will never be self-sufficient or complete on this earth; that his chances of happiness & virtue, here, remain more or less constant [...]

Unfinished essay on Evelyn Waugh (1949)

admin — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 05:01:40 +0000

It has not proved possible to date precisely when George Orwell prepared the first part of the typescript of his essay on Evelyn Waugh, nor to date exactly the notes he wrote in his last Literary Notebook, though all are from 1949. On the cover of a red folder Orwell has written ‘Waugh / by end of April / 3000-4000 / 15,000 max).’ If these notes refer to the essay on Waugh, which seems likely, a date of April 1949 for the typed opening would be reasonable. The 5 1/2 page typescript looks to be Orwell’s own work. He was typing up to 25 March 1949, was then very ill, typed again from 14 April but did little typing after the beginning of May 1949 and for much of the time was forbidden to write. His letters in May show he found it impossible to put pen to paper except for personal and minor business matters. He had been reading Waugh in February and March (Robbery Under Law, When the Going Was Good, Rossetti: His Life and Works, and Work Suspended), but only one of these is touched upon in what survives of this essay. The essay was certainly typed [...]