First edition. George Orwell (1903-1950) died on 21 January 1950 of a tubercular haemorrhage at University College Hospital in London, following a long period of treatment for tuberculosis at a sanatorium in Gloucestershire and University College Hospital during the preceding year. On 13 October 1949, while a patient at University College Hospital, Orwell had married Sonia Brownell (to whom he had unsuccessfully proposed in 1945), and he also made preparations for the administration of his literary estate after his death. During his lifetime Orwell had published nine book-length volumes and two collections of essays, but, as Sonia Orwell states in her introduction, ‘in terms of actual words he produced very much more than seems possible for someone who died at the age of forty-six, was often struggling against ill-health and poverty and had such a passion for the time-consuming country pursuits of gardening, keeping animals, fishing and carpentry. But a great many of these words, really most of his journalism, were often written against the feeling he should be writing something else – novels or essays’ (I, p. [xv]). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters gathers together many of these writings (often appearing for the first time in book form), and, as Sonia Orwell explains, while ‘[t]hese four volumes are not the Complete Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’, taken together ‘with the novels and books they make up the definitive Collected Works’ (I, pp. xvi-xvii).

With regard to the contents of the work, the editors did not ‘set out to make an academic monument because neither his work nor his personality lends itself to such treatment and the period he lived in is too recent for any standard history to have been written of it’, but ‘[a]nything [George Orwell] would have considered as an essay is certainly included. We have excluded much of the journalism and many letters. The letters which are not included are of the “glad to meet you Saturday” or “would you send the proofs to the following address” kind. The journalism we have not printed is purely ephemeral and the very few surviving pieces of his youthful work are unimportant’ (I, p. xvii). The material is arranged chronologically for two reasons: firstly, because ‘it is extremely difficult to pigeonhole Orwell’s essays and journalism: few of the pieces can readily be labelled either as political or as literary writing. Such categories overlap and merge until what we really hear is the sound of a personal voice, an individual talking at random of the things that concern him on many different levels’ (I, pp. xvii-xviii).

Shortly before his death, George Orwell had added a clause to his will forbidding the writing of a biography – an injunction which Sonia Orwell observed and enforced strenuously, despite entreaties from a number of would-be biographers. This provided her with the second reason for the chronological arrangement of the material in the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: ‘to give a continuous picture of Orwell’s life as well as of his work. [...] With these present volumes the picture is as complete as it can be. Inevitably, many of the letters he wrote have been lost and many of his friends throw away letters as a matter of course. Only one to each of his wives has survived. But with the material available, I felt that arranging the letters, rather unorthodoxly, among the texts did give an idea of how his life and work developed. To him they were one’ (I, p. xix).

Although two collections of Orwell’s essays had appeared during his lifetime – Inside the Whale (1940) and The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) – ‘the publication of the invaluable Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell [...] enabled us to see exactly how complex and varied a writer Orwell was compared to what we had concluded on the basis of the major novels alone’ (P. Schlueter, ‘Trends in Orwell Criticism 1968-1984’, in B. Oldsey and J. Browne, Critical Essays on George Orwell (Boston, MA, 1986), pp. 229-249 at p. 230). Indeed, as Bernard Crick wrote some ten years after their publication, ‘[m]uch critical opinion now locates [Orwell’s] genius in his essays. [...] His best essays are by no means all political, though those on politics and literature, language and censorship have become classics of English prose, anthologized and translated throughout the world, even where they are not supposed to be read’ (George Orwell: A Life (Harmondsworth, 1987), pp. 18-19). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters is notable for its high editorial standards, the bibliography of Orwell’s writings at the end of each volume, the chronologies of his life during the period covered by each volume, and the comprehensive indices (complied by Oliver Stallybrass) to the individual volumes.

The publication of Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters brought a large quantity of biographical material into print and, ironically, made it much harder for Sonia Orwell to control the material that potential biographers were able to draw upon. The publication of The Unknown Orwell by the American writers Peter Stansky and William Abrahams in 1972 led the writer’s widow to decide reluctantly that it would be preferable if she appointed an official biographer (which would permit her at least some control over what was published). Bernard Crick was appointed the authorised biographer of George Orwell, with full access to the Orwell Archive and her benediction, and Crick’s George Orwell: A Life was published in 1980 – a few months before Sonia Orwell’s death on 11 December 1980.

G. Fenwick, George Orwell, D12a.

¶¶¶

‘ORWELL, George’ (i.e. Eric Arthur BLAIR). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume I An Age Like This 1920-1940. [–Volume II My Country Right or Left 1940-1943; –Volume III As I Please 1943-1945; –Volume IV In Front of Your Nose 1945-1950]. Edited by ‘Sonia Orwell’ [i.e. Sonia Mary Brownell] and Ian Angus. London: William Clowes and Sons, Limited [I and III] and The Camelot Press Ltd [II and IV] for Secker & Warburg, 1968.

¶¶¶

Order this set directly from our website (www.typeandforme.com) or email us with any enquiries.