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Selected Essays
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.‘When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words’Best known for his remarkable novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s essay writings throughout the 1930s and 40s are just as compelling. From ‘Why I Write’ to ‘Shooting an Elephant’ and ‘A Hanging’, his observations offer contemporary readers a snapshot of Britain during some of its most turbulent decades.This collection, ranging from Orwell’s experiences as a police officer in South-East Asia to opinion pieces on British political unrest and the horrors of war, is a selection of his most acclaimed essays, which continue to be revered today for their originality and insight.
240 pages, Paperback
Published May 25, 2023
About the author
George Orwell
1,422 books53.8k 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 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 27, 2024
অরওয়েলের বিশ্লেষণ করার ক্ষমতা অতুলনীয়। তিনি ক্রিটিকাল থিংকিং শেখার একটা স্কুল।
ফ্যাসিজম, বিশ্বযুদ্ধ, কলোনিয়ালিজম, টোটালিটারিয়ানিজম, নাজিবাদ - ইউরোপের ইতিহাসের অন্ধকার একটা যুগ অরওয়েলের মত লেখক তৈরি করেছে। অরওয়েলকে আরও ভালোভাবে অনুধাবন করতে বিংশ শতাব্দীর প্রথমার্ধের ইতিহাস পাঠের প্রয়োজনীয়তা আছে।
আরও পড়ালেখা করতে হবে আমার। তারপর কিছু লিখবো আশা করি।
এছাড়া এই শীতের রাতে মোবাইলে টাইপ করাও সমস্যার। এখানেই লেখা থামিয়ে চলে যাচ্ছি কম্বলের নীচে।
ফ্যাসিজম, বিশ্বযুদ্ধ, কলোনিয়ালিজম, টোটালিটারিয়ানিজম, নাজিবাদ - ইউরোপের ইতিহাসের অন্ধকার একটা যুগ অরওয়েলের মত লেখক তৈরি করেছে। অরওয়েলকে আরও ভালোভাবে অনুধাবন করতে বিংশ শতাব্দীর প্রথমার্ধের ইতিহাস পাঠের প্রয়োজনীয়তা আছে।
আরও পড়ালেখা করতে হবে আমার। তারপর কিছু লিখবো আশা করি।
এছাড়া এই শীতের রাতে মোবাইলে টাইপ করাও সমস্যার। এখানেই লেখা থামিয়ে চলে যাচ্ছি কম্বলের নীচে।
January 9, 2025
i. how i write (this review)
A: somewhat pretentiously
Q: but there is a point, right?
A:
Q: but there is a point, right!?
A: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(It is difficult to review any kind of anthological content. Take the pieces as a whole and your risk seeing false patterns, but trying to approach them separately is inherently dishonest: the pieces might not have been first written to stand next to each other but, once they are elbowing each other between covers, they will be read as a community and exist as such in your head. They exist as such in my head, at any rate, and the most interesting things I've got to say about them (with the amount of mental effort and skill (dubious, if real) I'm willing to expend right now) are all about Orwellian thought as aggregate, so this is what I'm writing about here—
—which is to say, with the implicit understanding that George Orwell's essays are worth reading individually and for their specific thoughts on any given theme. The underrated value of reading scattershot, in a pecking, skimming, criss-crossing manner is implied and left as an exercise to the reader.)
ii. the observer; orwell's preoccupations.
It's striking how obstinately middlebrow, how engaged with popular culture Orwell is as critic and reviewer. He is profoundly attentive to the ways media, even media seen as inconsequential and frivolous, especially media that we've taken up in our childhood, shapes us: The minds of us all, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed. (Wells, Hitler and the World State)
He examines serial boarding school stories (Boys' Weeklies) and the banal bourgeous vulgar humour of post cards (The Art of Donald McGill) and trends in crime novels (Raffles and Miss Blandish) and traces the spirit of the age in them, the material conditions of fiction consumption, the ways different strata of society reach towards fuiction to try to deal with the hardship and uncertainty of a horror-filled, changing world – mostly by clinging to a dead one, it often turns out.
This preoccupation with time (and class-based temporality) leads to several sharp and striking insights in Orwell's analysis, as Stefan Collini is wont to point out: Kipling is innately un-fascistic because he is innately a man of an old and dead world, a pre-1918 imperialist; H.G. Wells's scientific utopianism, too, is a phantom of the 19th century; P.G. Wodehouse is the perpetual schoolboy in arrested development; schoolboy stories as such have been in arrested development for as long, etc.
But most enduring and perhaps fundamental to Orwell's politics is his preoccupation with lived life. With daily working experience. With the hardship and joy and immediacy of life. Significantly, among his criticisms of writers who can only write of the writer's world (like Henry Miller) or eternal schoolboys (such as Wodehouse) is that they seem profoundly incapable of imagining a desirable vocation. For at bottom Orwell is a believer in work and life, must have at some point idolized them even if he didn't idealize them, and strived to be near to the working class.
iii. observing; eric blaire's preoccupations.
I have kept speaking of "Orwell's writings" so far. Orwellian preoccupations. Orwell is a pseudonym, a particularly consciously constructed author-identity, and I speak of him purposefully. For there is a unity of the author's works that should be considered and there are ways in which Orwell's essays have Orwellian focus: they help draw sharper the concerns with ideological orthodoxy and language and totalitarianism which characterise the modes of dystopia that 'Orwellian' has become a by-word for.
And I do mean it, that Orwell's essays are Orwellian.
Yet I do feel like there is an insidious tendency to Orwell's battle for hard truths, his clear-eyed close-to-earth judgement. Eric Arthur Blaire was, after all, a man who purposefully tried to escape his Etonian upbringing. There is the air of reactionary temptation to his critique of the intelligentsia he no doubt belonged to.
(In this essay I will use illness as mixed metaphor.)
For Eric Arthur Blair is, too, in some pervasive and inescapable ways, a man of a dead age. In How the Poor Die he writes: And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots. There is something of the death drive in it, and the myth of the glorious death, a 19th century artefact: Dulce et decorum est...
It is significant that he did not die in his boots, and for a large part of his life was aware he was very much likely to die in a bed. His death, too, has something of the dust of the 19th century about it — for tuberculosis was the glamorous malady of the early 1800s: the death of poets, the slow pale killer of youth, robbed of its romanticism by medicalisation. (Once germ theory was established and people knew that the poor and wretched were as likely, if not more, to get it as the rich and brilliant, they ceased writing operas it. Meanwhile, it is treatable, and also kills more people than ever before by the raw numbers.)
None of us are immune to reflexive romanticisation.
I, for one, greatly prefer dying in my bed.
iv. an obobservance; the orwellian preoccupation.
You can't really read Orwell, nevermind type out the word Orwellian, without operating in the shadow of the reputation of his great dystopias, the memory and misuse of his critiques of totalitarianism — and if fascists go around confidently yileding 1984 as a cudgel, contrary to what should be apparent contradition, there's some natural impulse to try and suss out a totatilitarian streak in the origin(ator.)
(Firstly, one should never assume that a fascist is ever bothered by being untruthful or openly ridiculous—)
There is the polemicist's bravado, the macho appeal of being a no-nonsense truth-teller that no doubt is part of what endears Orwell to half-masked totalitarians to this day.
(For there is no truth in the post-1918 political world but power (Orwell was early in recognising this) and the fascist is acutely aware if it—)
But, mostly, Orwell was a critic – a brilliant one.
And the most insightful critics, I've noticed, are reluctant to offer solutions: this maybe be because the critical process inherently destabilizes any strong inner ideology, or because their vocation makes them doubly weary, but above all because this is not their craft. Their work is the question, the method, the chipping away, this is what they have perfected.
But we wander for concrete political prescriptions, into orthodoxies. And it's up to us when we use our tools of deconstruction even if we know the how
ps. notes on the book as a physical object:
In contrast to the admirable record of earlier Oxford World's Classics publishings, this one says nothing about being printed on acid-free paper, which is a major dissapointment. (It might be possible that the paper is still acid-free (perhaps I will do a bunch of comparative litmus swatching at some point), but the lack of transparency about material would still be problematic.) The ability of books to physically last is something integral to them being able to serve well as scholarly reference. (Which is what the World's Classics profess to be aiming at, and what I've grown to like them for.)
The paper is also paler, compared with the creamy tone of earlier offerings that I have on my bookshelf, and quite thin - making the Selected Essays a somewhat deceptively slim, delightfully floppy, handleable volume. That thin, low-density paper is unfortunately not very friendly to highlighting - which is not good for any non-fiction. (I can still manage, but it does requite a lot of tolerance for bleed-through.)
However, the typical miniature of the cover image on the spine is a rare success and nice touch: Orwell's eyes stare out at you in sharp contrast, which is ironically appropriate iconography for a social critic and the father of Big Brother.
A: somewhat pretentiously
Q: but there is a point, right?
A:
Q: but there is a point, right!?
A: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(It is difficult to review any kind of anthological content. Take the pieces as a whole and your risk seeing false patterns, but trying to approach them separately is inherently dishonest: the pieces might not have been first written to stand next to each other but, once they are elbowing each other between covers, they will be read as a community and exist as such in your head. They exist as such in my head, at any rate, and the most interesting things I've got to say about them (with the amount of mental effort and skill (dubious, if real) I'm willing to expend right now) are all about Orwellian thought as aggregate, so this is what I'm writing about here—
—which is to say, with the implicit understanding that George Orwell's essays are worth reading individually and for their specific thoughts on any given theme. The underrated value of reading scattershot, in a pecking, skimming, criss-crossing manner is implied and left as an exercise to the reader.)
ii. the observer; orwell's preoccupations.
It's striking how obstinately middlebrow, how engaged with popular culture Orwell is as critic and reviewer. He is profoundly attentive to the ways media, even media seen as inconsequential and frivolous, especially media that we've taken up in our childhood, shapes us: The minds of us all, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed. (Wells, Hitler and the World State)
He examines serial boarding school stories (Boys' Weeklies) and the banal bourgeous vulgar humour of post cards (The Art of Donald McGill) and trends in crime novels (Raffles and Miss Blandish) and traces the spirit of the age in them, the material conditions of fiction consumption, the ways different strata of society reach towards fuiction to try to deal with the hardship and uncertainty of a horror-filled, changing world – mostly by clinging to a dead one, it often turns out.
This preoccupation with time (and class-based temporality) leads to several sharp and striking insights in Orwell's analysis, as Stefan Collini is wont to point out: Kipling is innately un-fascistic because he is innately a man of an old and dead world, a pre-1918 imperialist; H.G. Wells's scientific utopianism, too, is a phantom of the 19th century; P.G. Wodehouse is the perpetual schoolboy in arrested development; schoolboy stories as such have been in arrested development for as long, etc.
But most enduring and perhaps fundamental to Orwell's politics is his preoccupation with lived life. With daily working experience. With the hardship and joy and immediacy of life. Significantly, among his criticisms of writers who can only write of the writer's world (like Henry Miller) or eternal schoolboys (such as Wodehouse) is that they seem profoundly incapable of imagining a desirable vocation. For at bottom Orwell is a believer in work and life, must have at some point idolized them even if he didn't idealize them, and strived to be near to the working class.
But a normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is 'weak', 'sinful' and anxious for a 'good time'. Most people get a fair amount of fun in their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life. 'Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all' . . . [O]ne must choose between this world and the next. And the enormous majority of human beings, if they understood the issue, would choose this world. They make that choice when they continue working, breeding and dying . . .—Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947)
iii. observing; eric blaire's preoccupations.
I have kept speaking of "Orwell's writings" so far. Orwellian preoccupations. Orwell is a pseudonym, a particularly consciously constructed author-identity, and I speak of him purposefully. For there is a unity of the author's works that should be considered and there are ways in which Orwell's essays have Orwellian focus: they help draw sharper the concerns with ideological orthodoxy and language and totalitarianism which characterise the modes of dystopia that 'Orwellian' has become a by-word for.
And I do mean it, that Orwell's essays are Orwellian.
Yet I do feel like there is an insidious tendency to Orwell's battle for hard truths, his clear-eyed close-to-earth judgement. Eric Arthur Blaire was, after all, a man who purposefully tried to escape his Etonian upbringing. There is the air of reactionary temptation to his critique of the intelligentsia he no doubt belonged to.
(In this essay I will use illness as mixed metaphor.)
For Eric Arthur Blair is, too, in some pervasive and inescapable ways, a man of a dead age. In How the Poor Die he writes: And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots. There is something of the death drive in it, and the myth of the glorious death, a 19th century artefact: Dulce et decorum est...
It is significant that he did not die in his boots, and for a large part of his life was aware he was very much likely to die in a bed. His death, too, has something of the dust of the 19th century about it — for tuberculosis was the glamorous malady of the early 1800s: the death of poets, the slow pale killer of youth, robbed of its romanticism by medicalisation. (Once germ theory was established and people knew that the poor and wretched were as likely, if not more, to get it as the rich and brilliant, they ceased writing operas it. Meanwhile, it is treatable, and also kills more people than ever before by the raw numbers.)
None of us are immune to reflexive romanticisation.
I, for one, greatly prefer dying in my bed.
iv. an obobservance; the orwellian preoccupation.
You can't really read Orwell, nevermind type out the word Orwellian, without operating in the shadow of the reputation of his great dystopias, the memory and misuse of his critiques of totalitarianism — and if fascists go around confidently yileding 1984 as a cudgel, contrary to what should be apparent contradition, there's some natural impulse to try and suss out a totatilitarian streak in the origin(ator.)
(Firstly, one should never assume that a fascist is ever bothered by being untruthful or openly ridiculous—)
There is the polemicist's bravado, the macho appeal of being a no-nonsense truth-teller that no doubt is part of what endears Orwell to half-masked totalitarians to this day.
(For there is no truth in the post-1918 political world but power (Orwell was early in recognising this) and the fascist is acutely aware if it—)
But, mostly, Orwell was a critic – a brilliant one.
And the most insightful critics, I've noticed, are reluctant to offer solutions: this maybe be because the critical process inherently destabilizes any strong inner ideology, or because their vocation makes them doubly weary, but above all because this is not their craft. Their work is the question, the method, the chipping away, this is what they have perfected.
But we wander for concrete political prescriptions, into orthodoxies. And it's up to us when we use our tools of deconstruction even if we know the how
ps. notes on the book as a physical object:
{paperback, publ. 2021, OUP}In contrast to the admirable record of earlier Oxford World's Classics publishings, this one says nothing about being printed on acid-free paper, which is a major dissapointment. (It might be possible that the paper is still acid-free (perhaps I will do a bunch of comparative litmus swatching at some point), but the lack of transparency about material would still be problematic.) The ability of books to physically last is something integral to them being able to serve well as scholarly reference. (Which is what the World's Classics profess to be aiming at, and what I've grown to like them for.)
The paper is also paler, compared with the creamy tone of earlier offerings that I have on my bookshelf, and quite thin - making the Selected Essays a somewhat deceptively slim, delightfully floppy, handleable volume. That thin, low-density paper is unfortunately not very friendly to highlighting - which is not good for any non-fiction. (I can still manage, but it does requite a lot of tolerance for bleed-through.)
However, the typical miniature of the cover image on the spine is a rare success and nice touch: Orwell's eyes stare out at you in sharp contrast, which is ironically appropriate iconography for a social critic and the father of Big Brother.
February 23, 2024
Almost every single essay is connected to some political issue and war, which is not really surprising as Orwell himself said, 'In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'.' It is a good collection of his essays, containing some of the important ones that were written in the 1940s when he was broadly involved in the political scene. I'm not particularly interested in the politics of the Second World War, so the essays get tedious at times.
December 15, 2025
everyone yaps about 1984 and animal farm and yes, they’re brilliant. but the essays? that’s where the real danger lies. he notices hypocrisy, absurdity, and human stupidity in ways that feel immediate, sharp, and completely relentless. it’s an instruction manual for seeing through the noise. reading him doesn’t just make you smarter; it makes you harder to manipulate.
August 28, 2022
Surprise. That’s my dominant feeling as I finished reading this book. This is a book of essays written in the 1940s. I expected to find them well written. And they are. What is surprising is how relevant they are, how entertaining and thought provoking even 80 years later.
Orwell writes deeply about major writers like Dickens and Kipling. But also about two penny magazines for boys and James Hadley Chase. He does a wonderful survey of books of crime and puts up a stout defence of Wodehouse and Shakespeare.
The essay I liked best though was on Nationalism. So also his essay on freedom of speech. He could have written those today. Also his thoughts on how writers should interact with politics is worth reading.
I’m glad I found and read this book.
Orwell writes deeply about major writers like Dickens and Kipling. But also about two penny magazines for boys and James Hadley Chase. He does a wonderful survey of books of crime and puts up a stout defence of Wodehouse and Shakespeare.
The essay I liked best though was on Nationalism. So also his essay on freedom of speech. He could have written those today. Also his thoughts on how writers should interact with politics is worth reading.
I’m glad I found and read this book.
October 6, 2025
My copy included:
1. Why I write : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. Decline of the English Murder : ⭐⭐
3. Books vs. Cigarettes : ⭐⭐
4. My Country Right or Left : ⭐⭐⭐
5. The Lion and the Unicorn : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
6. Future of a Ruined Germany : ⭐⭐⭐
7. Politics and the English Language : ⭐⭐⭐
8. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
9. Shooting and Elephant : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
10. A Hanging : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
11. Charles Dickens : ⭐⭐⭐
1. Why I write : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. Decline of the English Murder : ⭐⭐
3. Books vs. Cigarettes : ⭐⭐
4. My Country Right or Left : ⭐⭐⭐
5. The Lion and the Unicorn : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
6. Future of a Ruined Germany : ⭐⭐⭐
7. Politics and the English Language : ⭐⭐⭐
8. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
9. Shooting and Elephant : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
10. A Hanging : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
11. Charles Dickens : ⭐⭐⭐
January 9, 2026
i thought this was a wonderful selection of several stories, opinion pieces and just the prose we've come to expect from Orwell. very thorough, insightful and a unique insight; even more happier, perhaps? when compared to the usual broody, depressing works we've come to know of him... nice seeing a completely different shade of him. the one that stood out the most was of his fair critique of charles dickens or the piece about politics and the english language.
anyone who's able to get this, do get, but it isn't your typical stories but more focused on his thoughts on stuff that still are relevant today. i am excited however, tomorrow (or rather later in the day) i'll be starting moby dick!
below are the titles in the book; you can search them if you wanna read as they're easy to read too.
1. Why I Write
2. Decline of the English Murder
3. Books vs. Cigarettes
4. My Country Right or Left
5. The Lion and the Unicorn
6. Future of a Ruined Germany
7. Politics and the English Language
8. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
9. Shooting an Elephant
10. A Hanging
11. Charles Dickens
anyone who's able to get this, do get, but it isn't your typical stories but more focused on his thoughts on stuff that still are relevant today. i am excited however, tomorrow (or rather later in the day) i'll be starting moby dick!
below are the titles in the book; you can search them if you wanna read as they're easy to read too.
1. Why I Write
2. Decline of the English Murder
3. Books vs. Cigarettes
4. My Country Right or Left
5. The Lion and the Unicorn
6. Future of a Ruined Germany
7. Politics and the English Language
8. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
9. Shooting an Elephant
10. A Hanging
11. Charles Dickens
January 2, 2026
Reading Orwell essays at a New Years Eve party wasn’t exactly my idea of fun, but I really wanted to finish this as my 15th book for 2025. Enjoyable and full of wisdom.
July 22, 2026
There is a distinctive transportive quality to Orwell's work that feels paradoxically akin to both time travel and timelessness; the essays he writes are deeply rooted in their milieu, though his criticisms and ideas are still ever present in current sentiments. It was also a fascinating character study, as when you move through each essay, you are witness to the evolution of the author: every experience crystallizes or challenges his beliefs, and each thought branches and flowers. In turn, these entries preserve a slice of his perspective, while the collection itself serves as the progression of the distinctive Orwell character we know today (note the collection is non-chronological - I think back to Qiu Miaolin's insistence that "they can be read in any order" for her last semi-autobiographical work, though I feel the order of things does have an impact, there is a human urge to create a timeline). Each essay chronicled below:
Why I Write (1946) - Stands on its own just fine (title is self explanatory), but is doubly enjoyable when you play the game of connecting his four motives for writing with his subsequent/previous work. His love of writing informs his criticisms of it, lending said criticisms precision.
Decline of the English Murder (1946) - I found an interesting point of this to be partial desensitization/reprioritization, in that what we see to be extreme violence has shifted in media significantly (how often are murders reported now, compared to the last few years? given atrocities in the world today, has the definition itself been modified in the zeitgeist/Overton window?).
Books vs Cigarettes (1946) - Contains a financial breakdown of the cost of living in the 1940s, done to justify reading as a relatively affordable recreation. I feel it would be an eye-opening exercise to do this myself to see if this argument still holds water (for the record, I got this copy for $6.99, though that price is rare now direct from print).
My Country Right or Left (1940) - Explores the feelings of patriotism prior to WWII. A particularly interesting tidbit is when Orwell recalls the artillery fire at the front during the Spanish Civil War to be lacking compared to his imagination, given his cadet-corps and Etonian upbringing. It brings up questions of how war is presented to us, and ties in with how feelings of patriotism manifest.
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) - I believe the longest essay in this collection, and one of the two that Orwell did not want to publish posthumously (see prev.). Written during the Blitz, the essay is urgent, and the essayist, frustrated. He lays down a six point plan for England and its place on the global stage, arguing that the war can only be won if England relinquishes its grasp on capitalism. His writing is evocative and designed so for the era of warfare: "A generation of the unteachable are hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.", "the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac... [knowing] that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your throat with." Much of his grievances with the powers-that-be are still applicable today (war profiteering running more rampant than ever, present demagogues that frighteningly mirror the past). Though I definitely don't agree with everything here (owed to prescience), a strong historical outlook I cannot deny.
Future of a Ruined Germany (1945) - Post war ruminations in a desolate Germany. Marks the cost of war, the difficulty in rebuilding, which we see today with the devastation of Palestine. This quote stuck with me: "To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilisation."
Politics and the English Language (1946) - The seeds of 1984 are evident in this essay. This is one of my favourites, as it paints the importance of language as an instrument of thought. An incisive criticism that prompts more active and deliberate engagement with everything we read/write. Similar to "Why I Write", the fun is also in catching Orwell breaking his own rules.
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946) - I've never been the biggest fan of springtime, but this essay convinced me otherwise. I love the message of appreciation as a political act, and the depiction of such is full of whimsy and endearment; a welcome contrast, I might add, after the hard hitting war essays.
Shooting an Elephant (1936) - I originally wish this essay was earlier in the compilation, as it so vividly and pointedly demonstrates an origin of Orwell's anti-imperialist stance, but changed my mind. This one reads more like a short story in flow and allegory, and leaves more up to the reader. Orwell does not shy from being unlikable here, frank in his relief after a horrible incident, putting his flaws on display in an echo to the ease of empire.
A Hanging (1931) - One of Orwell's most famous essays, describing a prisoner being herded to his execution. A brutal depiction of cognitive dissonance, best gone into blind.
Charles Dickens (1940) - Imagine my surprise when we cap off this adventure with an analysis of Dickens! 60 odd pages, at that. As I have (unfortunately) not read much of him, I will need to revisit it in the future. My current thought is that it is funny that I now have a framework to understand Dickens, the author, but little background to draw upon. The countdown to read Great Expectations begins anew.
All in all, a highly enjoyable essay collection! I recently acquired Down and Out About Paris and London, so I'm looking forward to reading that in due time. Several, if not all, of Orwell's essays are also available online, so I'm excited to read the ones that haven't been featured here.
Why I Write (1946) - Stands on its own just fine (title is self explanatory), but is doubly enjoyable when you play the game of connecting his four motives for writing with his subsequent/previous work. His love of writing informs his criticisms of it, lending said criticisms precision.
Decline of the English Murder (1946) - I found an interesting point of this to be partial desensitization/reprioritization, in that what we see to be extreme violence has shifted in media significantly (how often are murders reported now, compared to the last few years? given atrocities in the world today, has the definition itself been modified in the zeitgeist/Overton window?).
Books vs Cigarettes (1946) - Contains a financial breakdown of the cost of living in the 1940s, done to justify reading as a relatively affordable recreation. I feel it would be an eye-opening exercise to do this myself to see if this argument still holds water (for the record, I got this copy for $6.99, though that price is rare now direct from print).
My Country Right or Left (1940) - Explores the feelings of patriotism prior to WWII. A particularly interesting tidbit is when Orwell recalls the artillery fire at the front during the Spanish Civil War to be lacking compared to his imagination, given his cadet-corps and Etonian upbringing. It brings up questions of how war is presented to us, and ties in with how feelings of patriotism manifest.
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) - I believe the longest essay in this collection, and one of the two that Orwell did not want to publish posthumously (see prev.). Written during the Blitz, the essay is urgent, and the essayist, frustrated. He lays down a six point plan for England and its place on the global stage, arguing that the war can only be won if England relinquishes its grasp on capitalism. His writing is evocative and designed so for the era of warfare: "A generation of the unteachable are hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.", "the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac... [knowing] that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your throat with." Much of his grievances with the powers-that-be are still applicable today (war profiteering running more rampant than ever, present demagogues that frighteningly mirror the past). Though I definitely don't agree with everything here (owed to prescience), a strong historical outlook I cannot deny.
Future of a Ruined Germany (1945) - Post war ruminations in a desolate Germany. Marks the cost of war, the difficulty in rebuilding, which we see today with the devastation of Palestine. This quote stuck with me: "To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilisation."
Politics and the English Language (1946) - The seeds of 1984 are evident in this essay. This is one of my favourites, as it paints the importance of language as an instrument of thought. An incisive criticism that prompts more active and deliberate engagement with everything we read/write. Similar to "Why I Write", the fun is also in catching Orwell breaking his own rules.
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946) - I've never been the biggest fan of springtime, but this essay convinced me otherwise. I love the message of appreciation as a political act, and the depiction of such is full of whimsy and endearment; a welcome contrast, I might add, after the hard hitting war essays.
Shooting an Elephant (1936) - I originally wish this essay was earlier in the compilation, as it so vividly and pointedly demonstrates an origin of Orwell's anti-imperialist stance, but changed my mind. This one reads more like a short story in flow and allegory, and leaves more up to the reader. Orwell does not shy from being unlikable here, frank in his relief after a horrible incident, putting his flaws on display in an echo to the ease of empire.
A Hanging (1931) - One of Orwell's most famous essays, describing a prisoner being herded to his execution. A brutal depiction of cognitive dissonance, best gone into blind.
Charles Dickens (1940) - Imagine my surprise when we cap off this adventure with an analysis of Dickens! 60 odd pages, at that. As I have (unfortunately) not read much of him, I will need to revisit it in the future. My current thought is that it is funny that I now have a framework to understand Dickens, the author, but little background to draw upon. The countdown to read Great Expectations begins anew.
All in all, a highly enjoyable essay collection! I recently acquired Down and Out About Paris and London, so I'm looking forward to reading that in due time. Several, if not all, of Orwell's essays are also available online, so I'm excited to read the ones that haven't been featured here.
April 3, 2022
It is now a life goal of mine to read as much as possible of this man. Truly one of the smartest people to have lived, with a sharp wit, cutting insight and direct language to go along with it. I very much enjoy this journalistic style of writing and I just cannot wait to read more.
July 27, 2025
favourite author for a reason
June 28, 2026
George Orwell is such an interesting figure. His political takes are kind of all over the place? Not sure if that is even the right way to put it
January 16, 2022
George Orwell is primarily a political writer and his essays proves his prowess in that field of writing. For a person who isn't well-versed in this particular subject may think that these collection of essays are too dry and boring. However, the subject is PART of his essay much like his fantastic prose are another PART of his essay. Reading his work just to get a flavor of his writing style is enough to allow you to enjoy his collection of essays on writing, politics, and neo-politics.
If you're a writer and would want to learn from the best then reading this will definitely be insightful. But if you're looking at this book to read Orwell then I'd ask you to steer away from this and instead read his novels: Animal Farm and 1984.
If you're a writer and would want to learn from the best then reading this will definitely be insightful. But if you're looking at this book to read Orwell then I'd ask you to steer away from this and instead read his novels: Animal Farm and 1984.
August 2, 2023
Apparently, this is a very fresh Collins release. I stumbled upon it at a local bookstore.
Either way, as much as Animal Farm and 1984 are staples of my literary “taste” (for lack of a better, more undeveloped word), Eric Arthur Blair has shown himself (through alive people on the internet) to be a far more convoluted man than I thought before. His lowlights (and they get low) are very public nowadays, so I’ve grown to have a more difficult relationship with Orwell. A more critical one, if you will.
Anyhow, I loved some of the essays (Why I Write, Books v Cigarettes, Politics and the English Language) and didn’t like just a few (notably Shooting an Elephant - that one was just the rambling of a small, self-conscious soft shell of a man), but overall, the book is alright. His impact on the literary world is undeniable.
Either way, as much as Animal Farm and 1984 are staples of my literary “taste” (for lack of a better, more undeveloped word), Eric Arthur Blair has shown himself (through alive people on the internet) to be a far more convoluted man than I thought before. His lowlights (and they get low) are very public nowadays, so I’ve grown to have a more difficult relationship with Orwell. A more critical one, if you will.
Anyhow, I loved some of the essays (Why I Write, Books v Cigarettes, Politics and the English Language) and didn’t like just a few (notably Shooting an Elephant - that one was just the rambling of a small, self-conscious soft shell of a man), but overall, the book is alright. His impact on the literary world is undeniable.
December 21, 2023
more people should read this,
February 24, 2025
uhh idk my general thoughts on this? great collection ig, i definitely enjoyed some essays more than others but basically all were good, there wasn't any i actively disliked. but then again, i would read orwell's shopping list it seems and have a good time. definitely recommend these shorter works of his for anyone wanting to read some orwell :)
why i write - not breaking any ground here but this essay is definitely one of orwell's best. every reader should read this, it's a short but concise and very well-written exploration of the relationship between books (and art in general) and politics.
the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
books vs. cigarettes - tell me why a discussion from 1946 about the price and worth of books was current in 2024 slovakia. have we learned nothing. books should not be an upperclass commodity- i rest my case. please read this essay
there are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later...
politics and the english language - gonna reread this every time i have an essay to write. also anyone who has the slightest interest in politics should read this, it would make a lot of political discussions way easier.
some thoughts on the common toad - one of my favorite pieces of writing ever. orwell just gets it! go outside and touch some grass. life may not be perfect but it is worth living.
the point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing.
a hanging
he and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less.
charles dickens - not as bad as i feared. would have been indefinitely better if i'd actually read any of dickens' major works, but still a very high quality literary analysis, you can clearly see why orwell enjoys dickens and i think a great read for anyone who enjoys literature and discussions about it.
why i write - not breaking any ground here but this essay is definitely one of orwell's best. every reader should read this, it's a short but concise and very well-written exploration of the relationship between books (and art in general) and politics.
the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
books vs. cigarettes - tell me why a discussion from 1946 about the price and worth of books was current in 2024 slovakia. have we learned nothing. books should not be an upperclass commodity- i rest my case. please read this essay
there are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later...
politics and the english language - gonna reread this every time i have an essay to write. also anyone who has the slightest interest in politics should read this, it would make a lot of political discussions way easier.
some thoughts on the common toad - one of my favorite pieces of writing ever. orwell just gets it! go outside and touch some grass. life may not be perfect but it is worth living.
the point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing.
a hanging
he and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less.
charles dickens - not as bad as i feared. would have been indefinitely better if i'd actually read any of dickens' major works, but still a very high quality literary analysis, you can clearly see why orwell enjoys dickens and i think a great read for anyone who enjoys literature and discussions about it.
June 26, 2024
The real reason that I read this book is because I am sick and tired of hearing people of all political stripes — especially right wing hacks — throw around the term “Orwellian”. Nothing grinds my gears more than when stupid people confidently quote writers they know nothing about. I assume most of these experts in Orwell’s thought have read a handful of books in their lives and 1984 was memorable from their high school days.
Imagine they knew Orwell was a socialist…
Wonderful and inspiring collection, and all the more relevant today as Cold War tropes are reignited and pulsating through social media via bots and comment sections. Protect yourself from the AI that proposes to think for you, push you closer and closer to a true totalitarian nightmare of efficiency and profit. Read Orwell’s ESSAYS!
Imagine they knew Orwell was a socialist…
Wonderful and inspiring collection, and all the more relevant today as Cold War tropes are reignited and pulsating through social media via bots and comment sections. Protect yourself from the AI that proposes to think for you, push you closer and closer to a true totalitarian nightmare of efficiency and profit. Read Orwell’s ESSAYS!
April 10, 2025
Excellent! Sadly, it gets 3 stars because Orwell has no business ranting for 60 pages about Dickens... He did make good points in part II of that essay, tho. Most of the essays, though, were very entertaining. I like his view of writing (expressed in three of the essays!).
I would love to read someone compare "my country right or left" yo Burke's "reflections on the revolution in France." They have a similar appeal to the "natural" order of things with wildly different conclusions.
"Shooting an Elephant" was GUTTING
I would love to read someone compare "my country right or left" yo Burke's "reflections on the revolution in France." They have a similar appeal to the "natural" order of things with wildly different conclusions.
"Shooting an Elephant" was GUTTING
February 25, 2026
Come for the reputation, stay for the delight and the surprise and the Dickens. From the sumptuous essay about the toad, to the bleak accounts of the elephant he shot or the man he saw hanged; from the clarifying insights into Britain and the British, to the unsentimental love for Dickens, these essays inspired a surprising range of emotions, for someone whose prose can be as metallic as Hemingway's (and can be so beautiful and perfect it made me laugh out loud).
February 5, 2022
Interesting essays on a variety of literary topics, though Orwell usually brings the discussion back around to his usual hobbyhorses one way or another. I find his style very readable, solid and direct, although occasionally his insistence on painting himself as a sort of maverick on every topic he discusses becomes a bit tiresome. But it's hardly unearned, I suppose.
June 26, 2024
Loved three essays in particular:
1) Politics and the English Language
2) Hanging
3) Books vs. Cigarettes
Looking forward to exploring more of Orwell.
1) Politics and the English Language
2) Hanging
3) Books vs. Cigarettes
Looking forward to exploring more of Orwell.
Currently Reading
October 22, 2024Finaly a book I read solely for pleasure
December 18, 2024
4.5 stars
March 13, 2026
Witty Orwell as usual. Always use Anglo-Saxon words.
June 5, 2026
3.8/5 !
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews