Product Description

These essays, reviews and articles illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and who elevated political writing to an art.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17166 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From the Back Cover
"Orwell is the most influential political writer of the twentieth century . . . He gives us a gritty, personal example of how to engage as a writer in politics." –New York Review of Books

"[Orwell] evolved, in his seemingly offhand way, the clearest and most compelling English prose style this century . . . But of course he was more than just a great writer. We need him today because [of] his passion for the truth." –The Sunday Times (London)

"Had Orwell lived to a full term, he might well have gone on to become the greatest modern literary critic in the language. But he lived more than long enough to make writing about politics a branch of the humanities, setting a standard of civilized response to the intractably complex texture of life." –The New Yorker

"The real reason we read Orwell is because his own fault-line, his fundamental schism, his hybridity, left him exceptionally sensitive to the fissure—which is everywhere apparent—between what ought to be the case and what actually is the case. He says the unsayable."
–Financial Times

"Orwell was the conscience of his generation." —V. S. Pritchett

About the Author
George Orwell's brilliant reporting and political conscience formed an impassioned picture of his life and times. Orwell was born in India and educated at Eton. He served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927. He returned to England where he lived for several years in poverty. Among Orwell's books are DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, BURMESE DAYS and THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER. He is best known for the allegorical fable ANIMAL FARM and in the novel NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

Customer Reviews

Worthy collection that comes tragically close to excellence.
It's a little unfair to try and assign a grade to a life-spanning collection of essays like this one. By its very nature it has to run the gamut from Orwell's five-star smash hits like 'How the Poor Die', 'Politics versus Literature', and, of course, 'Politics and the English Language', through light, whimsical pieces such as 'Good Bad Books' or 'A Nice Cup of Tea', all the way to mechanical hackwork or tedious, failed conceits. (In the latter case I am thinking particularly of Orwell's 'Imaginary Interview' with Jonathan Swift, a style which has never, to my knowledge, been well done.) One can't very well assess the book as a whole, because it isn't. On the other hand, there is this to say: when Orwell is good, he is very good, and even when he is bad, he remains highly readable.

The collection, as a collection, is not as good. I do not want it thought that I am saying this is not a worthwhile book: it is. Simply by being an easily obtainable hardcover collection of Orwell's short and medium-length prose, it does a valuable service. Before this book came out, the only way to get a comprehensive collection of Orwell's essays in hardcover was to find a set of the four-volume "Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters" on the second-hand market, and the price demanded for that grows more exorbitant every year.

However, there are three major problems with the compilation. One is only slightly irritating, but the other two genuinely harm the utility of the book.

1. No page headings- This has been mentioned by other reviewers. The page headers say only "Essays", where in most other collections they would make mention of the essay you are currently reading. (This is true even of other Everyman's Library titles.) Because most of the pieces are short, you can easily flip back a page or two to find the title, but this grows tiresome fairly quickly, all the more so for the fact that the omission is so pointless.

2. No index of titles- This, to be fair, is not a fault of this one book. Rather, it is common to all Everyman's Library prose collections; I own volumes by Ernest Hemingway and Oscar Wilde, otherwise excellent, with the same problem. Because all the pieces are arranged chronologically, it is frustratingly hard to locate a specific essay; one has to guess where it fell in Orwell's career, turn to the table of contents, and run one's finger down the pages until one finds it. As the table of contents is seven pages long, this is inexcusably poor book design. My copy now sports Post-It notes sticking out the top for easy location of the major essays.

3. Footnotes- Orwell's footnotes have been converted into endnotes, and moved to the back of the book. This is not merely a case of editing for no good reason: it is plain wrong. Orwell's footnotes were invariably parenthetical, comprising asides from and elucidations of the main text; moreover, there are only thirty-eight of them in the book. There is no excuse for not putting them at the bottom of the page, where they belong. There they can be seen in the context of the essays, without requiring you to stop in mid-paragraph and flip to the back of a two-and-a-half-inch-thick book.

Other reviewers and the book's own publicity hype tout this as "the best one-volume collection of Orwell available". It is not, not by a long shot. It is certainly the most comprehensive. However, the _best_ one-volume Orwell is the "Collected Essays" which was first published in 1961 and has subsequently been reprinted many times. It is inexplicably hard to obtain in the U.S., but can be had from amazon.co.uk under the title "George Orwell: Essays". It gathers all of Orwell's major pieces without the ephemera; for the already dedicated Orwellphile, it is a delight to have all 80 numbers of 'As I Please' in one place, but for the reader new to Orwell, they are clutter.

Instead, this is the book you buy to keep on your bookshelf for the rest of your life and wear out with frequent consultation. It is a reference volume; the only time one might try to read it cover-to-cover would be on a very long flight. (I have done this, with great success.)

The most frustrating thing about this collection is how close it came to indispensibility. Had it been slightly better designed and edited, it would have been _the_ collection of Orwell's essays, required purchasing for every serious Orwell fan. (Save, perhaps, the manic completists who will settle for nothing less than the twenty-volume "Collected Works.") It is still worth your money, but so little effort would be required to make even more valuable that one must wonder why that effort was not invested.

Overall: A-, 9/10.

Clear and accessible and meaningful essays
The essays of George Orwell are model essays: concise, meaningful and accessible. And they haven't dated, for the most part. Obscure and lazy writing is still to be found everwhere, making an essay like "Politics and the English Language" very relevant. Orwell shows an eye for detail worthy of a poet in essays based on his foreign service experience, like "Shooting an Elephant," and his piece on hanging a man. His experiences with the Spanish Civil War and Second World War are related here, as well as pieces as light as "Books vs Cigarettes" where he considers how much he spends on both. In short, as enjoyable to read as they are meaningful.

Best one volumn collection of Orwell
I'd maintain that the world didn't turn out as gloomy as Orwell was afraid it would. Still, this is another reason why one should read Orwell, for his insights and brazen bravery. As an essayist, I find his subjects interesting and his prose lucid.

The book is hard-bound with a handsome cover. The collection includes the major essays, broken down chronologically, and includes favorites like "As I Please" columns. Let me give you an example of Orwell's bold insight. He would describe the dread at the whistling sound of a V-1 rocket, followed by an explosion, then confess the selfish nature of human beings in by noting their gratitude that he or she wasn't hit.

The volume of essays collected into one volume necessitates thin pages; it's similar to the pages of a Bible - very slight to the touch, and a shade of see-through. A more significant downside is the lack of index, but for readers familiar with Orwell, the table of contents can suffice. In all, the book is fairly priced, considering, say the cost of four volumes of collected works and letters.