George Orwell

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Standard Name: Orwell, George
Used Form: Eric Blair
Through the mid part of the twentieth century GO was prominent as a reporter on the social and political scene: he was one of those whose reporting helped to shape opinion and whose accounts now seem vital to understanding those times. Several of his essays have canonical status as much on historical as literary grounds. He published novels as well as non-fiction, but his two most famous novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are continuous in aim and effect with his polemical writing. The impact of these two novels was immediately felt and is still being felt in the twenty-first century.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Reception Hannah Arendt
On the whole Arendt's account of the rise of Nazism met with more general assent in the West than her account of the rise of Stalinism. Her leaving out the issue of the oppression of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Diana Athill
Part one is the story of the publishing houses that DA worked with. She begins by explaining that business figures (which someone had mentioned as the key to an interesting book about publishing) would not...
politics W. H. Auden
He became a strongly convinced socialist, though he never, unlike several of his friends, joined the Communist Party. In January 1937 he set out for Spain to offer help—ambulance-driving rather than fighting—to the Republican side...
Literary responses Vera Brittain
Seed of Chaos received little attention in the review journals, but VB received many hostile letters from outraged Britons, Americans, and Canadians. George Orwell wrote a two-part review or response in the Tribune denouncing her...
Textual Features Christine Brooke-Rose
Here CBR 's interest tips strongly away from content towards form, though she acknowledges that an attachment to form that excludes all else is totally withering.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
15
For the first time she uses a technique...
Material Conditions of Writing Catherine Carswell
During World War Two she broadcast on topics like the evacuation of children from the cities, managing on food rations, and the valuable social contact struck up between neighbours in unpropitious and stressful circumstances. Late...
Literary responses T. S. Eliot
George Orwell no doubt spoke for a section of Eliot's readership when he wrote in October 1942 of the first three quartets: There is very little in Eliot's later work that makes any deep impression...
Literary responses Zoë Fairbairns
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer, Frank Pike , judged the novel ambitious yet unpretentious.
Pike, Frank. “Catching Up: Fiction”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4003, p. 104.
104
He quoted a remark by Fay Weldon on its jacket, calling ZFa female H. G. Wells ,
Pike, Frank. “Catching Up: Fiction”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4003, p. 104.
104
Intertextuality and Influence Zoë Fairbairns
The novel pays homage to George Orwell , perhaps Britain's most famous dystopian writer. But ZF explained later, in 1984 came and went, that although she had learned from Orwell she could not quite...
Literary responses Graham Greene
George Orwell , once a colonial policeman himself, criticized the book harshly for its fascination with damnation and suicide. As he put it, Greene harboured the idea, which has been floating around ever since Baudelaire
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Harkness
John Goode calls Out of Worka sophisticated response to Engels 's critique [of A City Girl]. . . . Its protagonist becomes the register of vividly rendered experiences of the doss house, the...
Intertextuality and Influence Patricia Highsmith
In these tales, animals affected by human callousness and cruelty carry out some startling acts of reprisal. As PH herself puts it, animals get the better of their masters or owners, because the latter merit...
Literary responses P. D. James
The film adapted from the novel by Alfonso Cuarón , released in Britain in September 2006, was judged by a reviewer to have softened the blow of James's book just a little, even though it...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Storm Jameson
This volume contains Jameson's previously-written polemics City to Let—Berlin 1932, The Youngest Brother, The Defence of Freedom, and Documents.
Labon, Joanna. “Tracing Storm Jameson”. Women: A Cultural Review, Vol.
8
, No. 1, pp. 33-47.
36, 39-40
This last, which had appeared in Fact in July...
Textual Features Marghanita Laski
Through Rachel's conversations with the soldiers, it emerges that the Americans and Russians are vying for control over the offshore island, and the captain suspects that Russians have reached the family before him. ML uses...

Timeline

February 1936: The awesome trio of political theorist Harold...

Writing climate item

February 1936

The awesome trio
Laity, Paul. “The left’s ace of clubs”. Guardian Unlimited.
of political theorist Harold Laski , publisher Victor Gollancz , and writer and Labour MP John Strachey established the Left Book Club (LBC) .

18 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans...

National or international item

18 July 1936

The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco .

March 1940: An essay by George Orwell, published in Horizon,...

Writing climate item

March 1940

An essay by George Orwell , published in Horizon, claimed that popular boys' magazines of this time [stopped] the clock . . . at 1910. Britannia rules the waves, and no one has heard...

1 October 1954: In the Movement, a leading article in the...

Writing climate item

1 October 1954

In the Movement, a leading article in the Spectator, identified a newly sceptical and debunking tendency in modern British poetry, opposed to social hierarchy and cultural authority, including that of modernism.

22 January 1984: A commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and...

Building item

22 January 1984

A commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and aired during the broadcasting of the Super Bowl (US football championships), announced Apple Computers ' release of the Macintosh computer.

Texts

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Secker and Warburg, 1945.
Orwell, George. Burmese Days. Harper and Brothers, 1934.
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London. V. Gollancz ltd , 1933.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Secker and Warburg, 1938.
Orwell, George. Keep the Aspidistra Flying. V. Gollancz Ltd. , 1936.
Orwell, George. My Country Right or Left 1940-1943. Editors Orwell, Sonia and Ian Angus, Penguin Books, 1970.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker and Warburg, 1949.
Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant: and Other Essays. Secker & Warburg, 1950.
Orwell, George. The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Penguin in association with Secker and Warburg, 1984.
Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. Gollancz, 1937.