George Orwell (1903-1950)


Orwell's press card photo, 1943. Public domain image


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introduction & biography

Anthony, Andrew. "Orwell: The Observer Years." The Guardian 10 May 2003.

Ash, Timothy Garton. "Orwell in 1998." A review of The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison. The New York Review of Books 22 Oct. 1998 [preview only].

Ash, Timothy Garton. "Orwell for our time." Orwell was the most influential and prescient political writer of the 20th century, Garton notes, but does he still have relevance after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Guardian 4 May 2001.

Atwood, Margaret. "Orwell and Me." The novelist Margaret Atwood on the influence of Orwell's novels on her and on The Handmaid's Tale) The Guardian 15 June 2003.

Breton, Rob. "Crisis? Whose crisis? George Orwell and liberal guilt." Orwell's take on the failure of middle-class liberals to connect with the working class. College Literature 29, 4 (Fall 2002) pp 47-66 [free at jstor].

Cavendish, Richard. "Publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four." History Today 49, 6 (1999).

Crick, Bernard. "Blair, Eric Arthur (George Orwell)." Biography of Orwell by his major biographer, Sir Bernard Crick, for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Crick, Bernard. "George Orwell: Voice of a Long Generation." A briefer biography of Orwell, also by Sir Bernard Crick, this one for the BBC's British History, includes a few illustrations.

Crick, Bernard. "Orwell as a comic writer." Orwell Prize.

Gessen, Keith. "Eternal vigilance." On Orwell as an essayist and stylist. New Statesman 28 May 2009.

Hitchens, Christopher. "George Orwell Turns 100"; also "Nineteen Eighty-Four 60 Years Later." Audio files from NPR.

Hopkins, Chris. "George Orwell." A substantial introduction to Orwell's writing. At the Literary Encyclopedia, a subscription service which publishes newly written essays by subject specialists, available to the general public for a reasonable cost. On Burmese Days; on Animal Farm; on Nineteen Eighty-Four [subscription service].

Kerr, Douglas. "Orwell, Kipling, and Empire." Orwell Prize.

McCrum, Robert. "The masterpiece that killed George Orwell." The circumstances of Orwell's writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Guardian 9 May 2009.

Orwell, George. "Orwell Diaries, 1938-1942." From 2008 to 2012, Orwell's diaries were posted on this blog daily for the corresponding day 70 years earlier. The entire sequence can be accessed through the archive. The Orwell Foundation.

Orwell, George. Orwell at the BBC. Letters and memos from Orwell from the years when he worked at the British Broadcasting Company. BBC Archive.

Owen, Paul. "Nineteen Eighty-Four thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?" The source of Nineteen Eighty-Four in We, a novel by Soviet Union writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. The Guardian 8 June 2009.

Paxman, Jeremy. "The genius of George Orwell." Orwell as an essayist and prose stylist. Introduction to Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell (Penguin Classics).

Pimlott, Ben. "Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four." Orwell Prize.

Pritchett, V.S. "The most honest writer alive." Extract from Pritchett's original 1949 review of Nineteen Eighty-Four in The New Statesman.

Rae, Patricia. "Mr. Charrington's junk shop." On modernist influences in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Twentieth Century Literature Summer 1997 [free at jstor].

Saunders, Loraine. "George Orwell, A Master of Narration." Orwell Prize.

Stansky, Peter. "Utopia and Anti-Utopia: William Morris and George Orwell." The Threepenny Review 10 (Summer 1982) pp 3-5 [free at jstor].

Taylor, D.J. "A brief life," by Orwell biographer D.J. Taylor, at The Orwell Foundation.


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