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things to read made of trees
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Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

George Orwell
Apr 03, 2003, 22:42
With you all the way on the Orwell thing. Although 1984 and Animal Farm are (rightly) always praised highly, it's his non-fiction that really gets me. I love Homage To Catalonia, his book about his time in the Spanish Civil War and written only months later.

Best of all is the Collected Essays, Letters & Journalism, a 4-volume set put out in the early 70s but still easy to find second hand. It has all the big essays (Inside The Wahle, etc), plus loads of personal letters and book reviews. The reviews were done for literary mags to pay the bills, and he frequently uses them as a platform for a big rant.

The really refreshing thing about this stuff is that he didn't think of posterity or great statements when writing it, so it is very sharp and incredibly historically informative. As late as 1936 he goes to a public discussion group in a pub in Leeds, and all but 2 people present are pro-German; how different to the good/evil image we've been taught about the rise of the Nazis and the British response.

And in his own mind, it's refreshing to see someone intelligent who changes their mind and readily admits it and explains why.

There was an utterly complete Orwell set published several years ago (£700 a pop), which led to a proper re-examining of his stuff so that a bunch of the non-fiction has been repressed in affordable chunks. A 500 page essays compilation is readily available, ISBN 0141183063.
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things to read made of trees (Rhiannon)		 Replies:
repressed in affordable chunks? (PaulMakesMusic)
Homage To Catalonia (FourWinds)
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