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It Is What I Think: 1947-1948
The paperback edition of Volume 19 of The Complete Works of George Orwell .
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
George Orwell
1,282 books50.7k followersEric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 24, 2022
Peter Davison has written the tangled tale of getting the 20 volume complete Orwell (9 volumes of fiction, 11 of other material) into print (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...). His vicissitudes are not entirely dissimilar to the American reader trying to buy books that are now over 20 years out of print and never available in American editions. For all my love of Orwell, this is the only volume of the Complete Orwell I currently own, although recently I realized that I was going to have to devote every book gift card I can lay hands on to the task of obtaining the others, come hell or high water, so I can read them before I die.
This volume, 1947-1948, covers two particularly fraught years in Orwell's life, and in spite of the romantic dreams of his biographers, the worst mistake he ever made - moving to the godsforsaken Scots isle of Jura, well out of the reach of doctors as his TB worsened, and forced to divide his writing with the lunatic amount of work required by living largely off the land, all this in a brutal climate and a cold house. Orwell's "Domestic Diary," reproduced here, gives some flavor of it (the remark "Filthy day" recurs frequently). Orwell spent months in hospital on the mainland during this period, but it only delayed the inevitable, and his inability to find a stenog willing to visit his island paradise to retype the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four likely hurried on the inevitable relapse.
This period largely covers Orwell's composition of Nineteen Eighty-Four and that, combined with a hospital stay the early parts of which he was far too sick to work during, means that a lot of this volume is composed of letters, ephemeral book reviews, and his Domestic Diary (all interesting, I might add). That said, there are also the final installments of his "As I Please" column from Tribune and several major essays (including his essay on George Gissing, which was not published during Orwell's lifetime), printed with Orwell's notes following when they were available. One minor disagreement I have with Davison, I think it would have made more sense to print Orwell's "Second Literary Notebook," here included as an appendix, in facsimile.
A must-have, very hard to find.
This volume, 1947-1948, covers two particularly fraught years in Orwell's life, and in spite of the romantic dreams of his biographers, the worst mistake he ever made - moving to the godsforsaken Scots isle of Jura, well out of the reach of doctors as his TB worsened, and forced to divide his writing with the lunatic amount of work required by living largely off the land, all this in a brutal climate and a cold house. Orwell's "Domestic Diary," reproduced here, gives some flavor of it (the remark "Filthy day" recurs frequently). Orwell spent months in hospital on the mainland during this period, but it only delayed the inevitable, and his inability to find a stenog willing to visit his island paradise to retype the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four likely hurried on the inevitable relapse.
This period largely covers Orwell's composition of Nineteen Eighty-Four and that, combined with a hospital stay the early parts of which he was far too sick to work during, means that a lot of this volume is composed of letters, ephemeral book reviews, and his Domestic Diary (all interesting, I might add). That said, there are also the final installments of his "As I Please" column from Tribune and several major essays (including his essay on George Gissing, which was not published during Orwell's lifetime), printed with Orwell's notes following when they were available. One minor disagreement I have with Davison, I think it would have made more sense to print Orwell's "Second Literary Notebook," here included as an appendix, in facsimile.
A must-have, very hard to find.
June 16, 2010
This is on-going. Almost a work of reference.
August 31, 2014
The book contains a lot of strong essays and stories ("Those were the days", for example), mostly around the period of his sickness and finishing of "1984".
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews