Modern Classics Such Such Were The Joys - Softcover

Orwell, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141394374 ISBN 13: 9780141394374

Publisher: Penguin Classic, 2014

Synopsis

SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS takes its titles from the long autobiographical account--nearly one third of the book--of Orwell's early schooling at a place he calls Crossgates, in which he draws a memorable portrait of the English public school. Despite all the pressures to conform, Orwell remained an individual. Until his dying day he was idiocyncratic.

The ten pieces brought together here range from "Anti-Semitism in Britain" to his analysis of the motivations of writers in "Why I Write." "Inside the Whale" is an appraisal of Henry Miller. "Looking Back on the Spanish War" is written from Orwell's perspective as a Loyalist volunteer.

About this title

From the Publisher

8 1-hour cassettes

About the Author

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there. At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded. Homage to Catalonia is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote Coming Up for Air. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. As literary editor of the Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later for the Manchester Evening News. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. George Orwell died in London in January 1950.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0141394374
• ISBN 13: 9780141394374
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 64