Down And Out In Paris And London The Road To Wigan Pier Homage To Catalonia Essays And Journalism: 1931 1940 Essays And Journalism: 1940 1943 Essays And Journalism: 1944 1945 Essays And Journalism: 1945 1949
Eric 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.
This great collection is sadly long out of print. It doesn't contain everything, but as a collection of Orwell's essays and narrative documentaries there is nothing to my knowledge approaching it, and I'm certain that everything within is unabridged. All the essays are as far as I can tell in print elsewhere now but if you are as lucky as I was to find it in a charity shop or wherever snap it up.