Until George Woodcock's The Crystal Spirit (1966), written by an anarchist thinker-activist and man of letters who befriended
Orwell during the last decade of his life, Hollis's Study remained the most influential book on
Orwell.
In "The Prevention of Literature" (1946), written just a few months after the British publication of Animal Farm,
Orwell elaborated on his reasons for wanting to expose communist tyranny.
Burmese Days was first published in the United States, and in 1934, in the New York Herald Tribune Books journal, Margaret Carson Hubbard astonishingly wrote that
Orwell had written wholly out of sympathy for the natives, and that U Po Kyin (the presiding and devoted villain) and Dr.
Orwell wrote of a man who "couldn't afford to buy fuel and ate his food raw".
We understand
Orwell as a writer of incessant attack, and if there is a form of humor that is associated with
Orwell, it is satire.
1939
Orwell composed his 'Diary of Events Leading Up to the
The masterly historian of Soviet terror Robert Conquest credited
Orwell with "moral genius," and leaves one inclined to think that this might be the rarest gift of all.
We suspect that dragging
Orwell into it won't matter much in the end, except to intrigue some additional readers to check out his books, in whatever format.
Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was a year old when his mother, Ida Blair, moved with him to Oxfordshire and he never visited his birthplace again.
He and 22 members of the
Orwell Society will travel to Barnhill, the remote farmhouse where the writer, real name Eric Blair, laboured over 1984 in an upstairs bedroom.
And homebuyers can see an
Orwell showhome by visiting the site which is open five days a week.
George
Orwell, die most widely read and influential serious writer of the twentieth century, has been my lifelong interest.
