George Orwell

Essays, journalism and essays by the brilliant, indispensable George Orwell from 1940 to 1943. Even many decades after his death, the more we read of Orwell, the more clearly we can think about our world and ourselves.

George Orwell served with anti-Stalinist communist forces during the Spanish Civil War―until he was forced to flee Spain and return to London. Back in England, he was more convinced than ever of his pro-democratic Socialist beliefs and produced essays such as “My Country Right or Left” and “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius.”

This volume covers a formational period in Orwell's life―and a crucial period for the world's response to totalitarianism and his own deepening commitment to socialism. Late in 1942, Orwell began regularly for the left-wing weekly Tribune and, early the next year began work on a new book called Animal Farm.

This second volume of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters by George Orwell will be enjoyed by anyone who believes that words can go a long way toward changing the world.

George Orwell is widely considered one of the greatest writers of the past century. Although his novels 1984 and Animal Farm are now the most widely-read of his works, Orwell was primarily a nonfiction writer. The occasionally radical political content in his essays, memoirs, and journalistic works brought him some censure during his life, but they now make up one of the most celebrated bodies of work in the English language.

Sonia Brownell Orwell, as a young woman, was responsible for transcribing and editing the copy text for the first edition of the Winchester Malory as assistant to the eminent medievalist at Manchester University, Eugene Vinaver. Brownell first met Orwell when she worked as the assistant to Cyril Connolly, a friend of his from Eton College, at the literary magazine Horizon. The two were married in October 1949, only three months before Orwell’s death from tuberculosis.

Ian Angus, a widely recognized Orwell scholar for decades, helped establish the Orwell Archive at University College, London and, in 1968, worked with Sonia Orwell in editing Orwell's Collected Journalism, Essays and Letters published by Secker & Warburg in England.