George Orwell Novels

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

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

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...
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Common Lodging Houses (September 1932)

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...
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Telling the Russians about Orwell

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...
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Through a Glass, Rosily

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

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

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....
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Unfinished essay on Evelyn Waugh (1949)

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...
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Doublethink

Doublethink, a word coined by George Orwell in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Its opposite is cognitive dissonance, where the two beliefs cause conflict...
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Night Attack on the Aragon Front (1937)

The New Leader, 30 April 1937 This article was headed by the statement ‘The whole of this story is in the words of the men who took part in it. It consists entirely of extracts from letters to John McNair from...
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The Orwell Reader (Part 1)

A collection of some of George Orwell’s best essays: A Hanging (1931) Shooting an Elephant (1936) Rudyard Kipling (1942) Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942) In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse (1945) Politics and the English Language (1946) Some Thoughts...
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Oysters and Brown Stout

Tribune, 22 December 1944 G. K. Chesterton said once that every novelist writes one book whose title seems to be a summing-up of his attitude to life. He instanced, for Dickens, Great Expectations, and for Scott, Tales of a Grandfather. What...
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William Makepeace Thackeray – A Little Dinner at Timmins’s (1848)

Punch, 27 May–29 July 1848 Table of Contents I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ I. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat little street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens. It is a...
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Wall Game

College Days, No. 3, 29 November 1919. Probably by Orwell. If you can keep your face, when all about you Are doing their level best to push it in. If you can swear (though, swearing, all men doubt you) It wasn’t you...
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Orwell meets Henry Miller in Paris

Alfred Perles (1897–1990), a friend and companion of Henry Miller the novelist, wrote this fascinating account of an odd encounter in Paris. Orwell had reviewed Miller’s Black Spring and written to him about his admiration for Tropic of Cancer. In his...
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Literature and the Left

Tribune, 4 June 1943 “When a man of true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this infallible sign, that all the dunces are in conspiracy against him.” So wrote Jonathan Swift, two hundred years before the publication...
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Letter from Eileen Blair in Barcelona to Leonard Moore (12 April 1937)

Seccion Inglesa, 10, Rambla de los Estudios, Barcelona. 12 April 1937 Dear Mr. Moore, I hope you received my message of thanks for sending out the two copies of Wigan Pier when it was first published. Now I wish to thank...
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Review of “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck

The Adelphi, June 1931 This is a very exceptional book. It starts uncertainly, and it is handicapped by a bad style, rather like the style of Lang’s crib to the Odyssey. But one scarcely worries about this, the story goes so...
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Friendship and love

Summer 1921. Orwell’s last poem to Jacintha Buddicom: Friendship and love are closely intertwined, My heart belongs to your befriending mind: But chilling sunlit fields, cloud-shadows fall— My love can’t reach your heedless heart at all. Jacintha Buddicom responded with: By light...
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Birth of George Orwell on 25 June 1903

Excerpt from Bernard Crick’s biography George Orwell: A Life. Eric Arthur Blair was born at Motihari in Bengal on 25 June 1903, five years after his sister Marjorie, who was born at Tehta in Bihar. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, was in...
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Letter to Sonia Brownell regarding trip to Jura (April 1947)

Barnhill Isle of Jura Argyllshire 12 April 1947 Dearest Sonia,1 I am handwriting this because my typewriter is downstairs. We arrived O.K. & without incident yesterday. Richard was as good as gold & rather enjoyed having a sleeper to himself after...
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George Orwell’s rules for effective writing

Excerpt from Politics and the English Language (1946) by George Orwell. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets...
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Paper is Precious

This script, which survives on microfilm, is filed as anonymous in the BBC Archives. It is adjacent to Money and Guns of 20 January 1942, and its style of presentation is the same. Programmes as Broadcast (PasB) records that the transmission took 8...
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Review of “Beggar My Neighbour” by Lionel Fielden

Horizon, September 1943; Partisan Review, Winter 1944 If you compare commercial advertising with political propaganda, one thing that strikes you is its relative intellectual honesty. The advertiser at least knows what he is aiming at — that is, money — whereas...
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How a Nation Is Exploited – The British Empire in Burma (May 1929)

Le Progrès Civique, 4 May 1929. Translated into English by Janet Percival and Ian Willison. Following the recent troubles in India, we have asked our contributor, Mr E. A. Blair, whose investigations on ‘The Plight of the British Worker’ have already appeared...
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Just Junk – But Who Could Resist It?

Evening Standard, 5 January 1946 Which is the most attractive junk shop in London is a matter of taste, or for debate: but I could lead you to some first-rate ones in the dingier areas of Greenwich, in Islington near the...
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Beggars in London (January 1929)

Le Progrès Civique, 12 January 1929 Any visitor to London must have noticed the large number of beggars one comes across in the streets. These unfortunates, often crippled or blind, can be seen all over the capital. You might say they...
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What is Science?

Tribune, 26 October 1945 In last week’s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart Cook, in which he suggested that the best way of avoiding the danger of a “scientific hierarchy” would be to see to it that every member of...
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Letter and drawing by George Orwell from boarding school (March 1912)

Uncorrected letter sent by George Orwell (Eric Blair) to his mother Ida from St. Cyprian’s preparatory school in Eastbourne, Sussex. 17 March 1912 My darling Mother, Thank you for your letter, please tell me what couler the giune-pig is. W are...
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Pamphlet Literature

New Statesman and Nation, 9 January 1943 One cannot adequately review fifteen pamphlets in a thousand words, and if I have picked out that number it is because between them they make a representative selection of eight out of the nine...
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No, Not One

Adelphi, October 1941 Mr Murry1 said years ago that the works of the best modern writers, Joyce, Eliot and the like, simply demonstrated the impossibility of great art in a time like the present, and since then we have moved onwards...
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Easter letter with drawing by George Orwell to his mother from boarding school (February 1912)

Uncorrected letter sent by George Orwell (Eric Blair) to his mother Ida from St. Cyprian’s preparatory school in Eastbourne, Sussex. 25 February 1912 My darling Mother, Thank you for that letter you sent me, but I couldent read it somewon tore...
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Grave of Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair (George Orwell’s first wife)

Eileen O’Shaughnessy (25 September 1905 – 29 March 1945) was the first wife of George Orwell. She died in tragic circumstances in the spring of 1945 in Newcastle upon Tyne whilst undergoing surgery, her death being caused by the anesthetic. She...
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Pictures of George Orwell (Part 1)

Eric Blair (George Orwell) on holiday at Church Stretton, Shropshire in September 1917 Eric Blair (holding rifle) with friends Guinevere and Prosper Buddicom. Jacintha Buddicom in 1918 Jacintha Buddicom was the subject of some of Eric Blair’s early love poems.
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Review of “Burnt Norton”, “East Coker” and “The Dry Salvages” by T. S. Eliot

Poetry London, October-November 1942; reprinted in Little Reviews Anthology, edited by Denys Val Baker, 1943. There is very little in Eliot’s later work that makes any deep impression on me. That is a confession of something lacking in myself, but it...
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