The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture."[1] His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature.
Orwell is best remembered for his political commentary as a left-wing anti-totalitarian. As he explained in the essay "Why I Write" (1946), "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."[2] To that end, Orwell used his fiction as well as his journalism to defend his political convictions. He first achieved widespread acclaim with his fictional novellaAnimal Farm and cemented his place in history with the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four shortly before his death. While fiction accounts for a small fraction of his total output, these two novels are his best-selling works, having sold almost fifty million copies in sixty-two languages by 2007—more than any other pair of books by a twentieth-century author.[3]
Orwell wrote non-fiction—including book reviews, editorials, and investigative journalism—for a variety of British periodicals. In his lifetime he published hundreds of articles including several regular columns in British newsweeklies related to literary and cultural criticism as well as his explicitly political writing. In addition he wrote book-length investigations of poverty in Britain in the form of Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier and one of the first retrospectives on the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia. Between 1941 and 1946 he also wrote fifteen "London Letters" for the American political and literary quarterly Partisan Review, the first of which appeared in the issue dated March–April 1941.
Only two compilations of Orwell's body of work were published in his lifetime, but since his death over a dozen collected editions have appeared. Two attempts have been made at comprehensive collections: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters in four volumes (1968, 1970), co-edited by Ian Angus and Orwell's widow Sonia Brownell; and The Complete Works of George Orwell, in 20 volumes, edited by Peter Davison, which began publication in the mid-1980s. The latter includes an addendum, The Lost Orwell (2007).
The impact of Orwell's large corpus is manifested in additions to the Western canon such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, its subjection to continued public notice and scholarly analyses, and the changes to vernacular English it has effected—notably the adoption of "Orwellian" as a description of totalitarian societies.
Books: non-fiction and novels
Orwell wrote six novels: Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Most of these were semi-autobiographical. Burmese Days was inspired by his period working as an imperial policeman and is fictionalized; A Clergyman's Daughter follows a young woman who passes out from overwork and wakes up an amnesiac, forced to wander the countryside as she finds herself, eventually losing her belief in God, despite being the daughter of a clergyman. Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up for Air are examinations of the British class system. Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are his most famous novels.
Since his death many collections of essays have appeared, with the first attempt at a comprehensive collection being the four-volume Collected Essays, Letters and Journalism of George Orwell edited by Ian Angus and Sonia Brownell, which was published by Secker and Warburg and Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1968–1970. Peter Davison of De Montfort University spent 17 years researching and correcting the entirety of Orwell's works[5] with Angus and Sheila Davison, and devoted the last eleven volumes of the twenty-volume series The Complete Works of George Orwell to essays, letters, and journal entries. The entire series was initially printed by Secker and Warburg in 1986, finished by Random House in 1998, and revised between 2000 and 2002.
Pamphlets
Starting with The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), several of Orwell's longer essays took the form of pamphlets:
Victory or Vested Interest? came from The Labour Book Service on 15 May 1942, with Orwell's "Culture and Democracy" (made up of the pieces "Fascism and Democracy" and "Patriots and Revolutionaries") amongst others.
Talking to India, by E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and Others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India was published in 1943 by Allen & Unwin, edited with an introduction by Orwell.
British Pamphleteers Volume 1: From the 16th Century the 18th Century from Allan Wingate, spring 1948 was co-edited by Orwell and Reginald Reynolds with an introduction by Orwell.
Poems
Orwell was not widely known for writing verse, but he did publish several poems that have survived, including many written during his school days:[6]
"Awake! Young Men of England" (1914)
"Ballade" (1929)
"A Dressed Man and a Naked Man" (1933)
"A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been" (1935)
"Ironic Poem About Prostitution" (written prior to 1936)
"Kitchener" (1916)
"The Lesser Evil" (1924)
"A Little Poem" (1935)
"On a Ruined Farm Near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory" (1934)
"Our Minds Are Married, but We Are Too Young" (1918)
"The Pagan" (1918)
"The Wounded Cricketer" (1920)
"Poem from Burma" (1922–1927)
"Romance" (1925)
"Sometimes in the Middle Autumn Days" (1933)
"Suggested by a Toothpaste Advertisement" (1918–1919)
In addition to the pamphlets British Pamphleteers Volume 1: From the 16th Century the 18th Century and Talking to India, by E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and Others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India, Orwell edited two newspapers during his Eton years—College Days/The Colleger (1917) and Election Times (1917–1921). While working for the BBC, he collected six editions of a poetry magazine named Voice which were broadcast by Orwell, Mulk Raj Anand, John Atkins, Edmund Blunden, Venu Chitale, William Empson, Vida Hope, Godfrey Kenton, Una Marson, Herbert Read, and Stephen Spender. The magazine was published and distributed to the readers before being broadcast by the BBC. Issue five has not been recovered and was consequently excluded from W. J. West's collection of BBC transcripts.
Collected editions
Two essay collections were published during Orwell's lifetime—Inside the Whale and Other Essays in 1940 and Critical Essays in 1946 (the latter published in the United States as Dickens, Dali, and Others in 1958.) His publisher followed up these anthologies with Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays in 1950, England Your England and Other Essays in 1953—which was revised as Such, Such Were the Joys—and Collected Essays in 1961. The first significant publications in the United States were Doubleday's A Collection of Essays by George Orwell from 1954, 1956's The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and Penguin's Selected Essays in 1957; re-released in 1962 with the title Inside the Whale and Other Essays and in abridged form as Why I Write in 2005 as a part of the Great Ideas series. In the aforementioned series, Penguin also published the short collections Books v. Cigarettes (2008), Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (2010), and Decline of the English Murder (2009). The latter does not contain the same texts as Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays, published by Penguin in association with Secker & Warburg in 1965. The complete texts Orwell wrote for the Observer are collected in Orwell: The Observer Years published by Atlantic Books in 2003.
In 1976 Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd in association with Octopus Books published The Complete Novels, this edition was later republished by Penguin Books in 1983, and reprinted in Penguin Classics 2000 and 2009. Since the publication of Davison's corrected critical edition, John Carey's thorough Essays was released on 15 October 2002, as a part of the Everyman's Library and George Packer edited two collections for Houghton Mifflin, released on 13 October 2008—All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays and Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays.
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus edited a four volume collection of Orwell's writings, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, divided into four volumes:
An Age Like This 1920–1940
My Country Right or Left 1940–1943 (first published 1968)
As I Please, 1943–1945
In Front of Your Nose, 1945–1950
The Complete Works of George Orwell is a twenty-volume series, with the first nine being devoted to the non-fiction books and novels and the final eleven volumes entitled:
A Kind of Compulsion: 1903–1936
Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937–1939
A Patriot After All: 1940–1941
All Propaganda Is Lies: 1941–1942
Keeping Our Little Corner Clean: 1942–1943
Two Wasted Years: 1943
I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943–1944
I Belong to the Left: 1945
Smothered Under Journalism: 1946
It Is What I Think: 1947–1948
Our Job Is to Make Life Worth Living: 1949–1950
In 2001 Penguin published four selections from The Complete Works of George Orwell edited by Peter Davison in their modern classics series titled Orwell and the Dispossessed: Down and Out in Paris and London in the Context of Essays, Reviews and Letters selected from The Complete Works of George Orwell with an introduction by Peter Clarke, Orwell's England: The Road to Wigan Pier in the Context of Essays, Reviews, Letters and Poems selected from The Complete Works of George Orwell with an introduction by Ben Pimlott, Orwell in Spain: The Full Text of Homage to Catalonia with Associated Articles, Reviews and Letters from The Complete Works of George Orwell with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens, and Orwell and Politics: Animal Farm in the Context of Essays, Reviews and Letters selected from The Complete Works of George Orwell with an introduction by Timothy Garton Ash.
Davison later compiled a handful of writings—including letters, an obituary for H. G. Wells, and his reconstruction of Orwell's list—into Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell, which was published by Timewell Press in 2006, with a paperback published on 25 September 2007. In 2011, Davison's selection of letters and journal entries were published as George Orwell: A Life in Letters and Diaries by Harvill Secker.[10] A selection by Davison from Orwell's journalism and other writings were published by Harvill Secker in 2014 under the title Seeing Things as They Are.
Other works
After his first publication—the poem "Awake! Young Men of England", published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard in 1914—Orwell continued to write for his school publications The Election Times and College Days/The Colleger.[6] He also experimented with writing for several years before he could support himself as an author. These pieces include first-hand journalism (e.g. 1931's "The Spike"), articles (e.g. 1931's "Hop-Picking"), and even a one-act play—Free Will. (He would also adapt four plays as radio dramas.)
His production of fiction was not as prolific—while living in Paris he wrote a few unpublished stories and two novels,[11] but burned the manuscripts. (Orwell routinely destroyed his manuscripts and with the exception of a partial copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, all are lost. Davison would publish this as Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May 1984, ISBN978-0-15-166034-6.) In addition, Orwell produced several pieces while working at the BBC as a correspondent. Some were written by him and others were merely recited for radio broadcast. For years, these went uncollected until the anthologies Orwell: The War Broadcasts (Marboro Books, June 1985 and in the United States, as Orwell: The Lost Writings by Arbor House, September 1985) and Orwell: The War Commentaries (Gerald Duckworth & Company Ltd., London, 1 January 1985) were edited by W. J. West. Orwell was responsible for producing The Indian Section of BBC Eastern Service and his program notes from 1 February and 7 December 1942 have survived (they are reproduced in War Broadcasts). He was also asked to provide an essay about British cooking along with recipes for The British Council. Orwell kept a diary which has been published by his widow—Sonia Brownell—and academic Peter Davison, in addition to his private correspondence.
Full list of publications
Legend for collected editions
All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays (AAIP)
Critical Essays (CrE)
Collected Essays (ColE)
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (CEJL)
A Collection of Essays by George Orwell (CoE)
Complete Novels (CN)
The Complete Works of George Orwell (CW)
Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays (DotEM)
England Your England and Other Essays (EYE)
Essays (Everyman's Library) (EL)
Essays (Penguin Classics) (ELp)
Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (FUF)
Inside the Whale and Other Essays (ItW)
Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell (LO)
On Jews and Antisemitism (JaA)
Orwell and Politics (OP)
Orwell and the Dispossessed (OD)
Orwell in Spain (OS)
Orwell: The Observer Years (OY)
Orwell: The War Broadcasts (WB)
Orwell: The War Commentaries (WC)
Orwell's England (OE)
The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage (OR)
Penguin Great Ideas
Books v. Cigarettes (BvC)
Decline of the English Murder (DEM)
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (STCM)
Why I Write (WIW)
Ruins. Orwell’s Reports as War Correspondent in France, Germany and Austria from February until June 1945 (R)
Review of Foreign Correspondent: Twelve British Journalists and In the Margins of History by L. B. Namier and Europe Going, Going, Gone! by Count Ferdinand von Czernin, published in Time and Tide[14]
"The Adventure of the Lost Meat-card"
3 June 1918
CW X
Short story published unsigned in The Election Times No. 4, pp. 43–46.[15][note 2]
"After Twelve"
1 April 1920
CW X
Poem published unsigned in College Days No. 4, p. 104, possibly by Orwell[16][note 3][note 4]
Published by Secker and Warburg in London on and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in New York City on 26 August 1946. The original printing is entitled Animal Farm: A Fairy Story.
Review of The Democrat at the Supper Table by Colm Brogan. Published in The Observer No. 8072 (10 February 1946) p. 3.[18][19]
"As One Non-Combatant to Another"
Poem
18 June 1943
CEJL II
Poem written in response to Alex Comfort's Letter to an American Visitor (published under the pseudonym "Obadiah Hornbrooke" in Tribune 9 June 1943), published in Tribune
unpublished response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
3 August 1937
CW XI, EL, OS
Unpublished response, written sometime between 3 and 6 August 1937, to a questionnaire sent out by Nancy Cunard and the Left Review for the pamphlet Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War.[22]
Review of the September 1937 issue of the magazine The Booster published in the New English Weekly Vol. XII, No. 2 (21 October 1937) pp. 30–31.[23][24]
Essay published in Evening Standard (2 February 1946) p. 6. Abridged version published as "I Don't Mind What the Weatherman Says" in SEAC: The All-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command (23 February 1946) p. 2.[27][19]
"Ballade"
June 1929
—
Written before the summer of 1929, this poem has not survived
Essay published in Tribune No. 476 (8 February 1946) p. 15. Abridged version published as "You Too Can Own a Library" in English Digest Vol. 21, No. 3 (May 1946) pp. 83–85.[29][19]
Letter to the editor in reply to a letter from The Booster (4 November 1937), published in the New English Weekly Vol. XII, No. 5 (11 November 1937) p. 100.[23][24]
Published by HarperCollins in New York City on 25 October 1934 and by Victor Gollancz, Ltd. in London on 24 June 1935. This is the only Orwell book to be initially published outside of the United Kingdom.
"Burmese Days"
24 February 1946
CEJL IV (excerpt), CW XVIII, OY
Review of The Story of Burma by F. Tennyson Jesse, Burma Pamphlets No. 7: The Burman: An Appreciation by C. J. Richards and Burma Pamphlets No 8: The Karens of Burma by Harry Ignatius Marshall. Published in The Observer No. 8074 (24 February 1946) p. 3.[30]
Burmese Interlude by C. V. Warren
12 January 1938
CW XI
Review of Burmese Interlude by C. V. Warren published unsigned in The Listener (12 January 1938) p. 101.[31][24][note 5]
"Burnham's View of the Contemporary World Struggle"
Poetry reviews published in Poetry London, October/November 1942
"But Are We Really Ruder? No"
26 January 1946
CW XVIII, EL
Published as a Saturday Essay in Evening Standard (26 January 1946) p. 6. Reprinted as "Are We Really Ruder? No" in SEAC: The All-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command (13 April 1946) p. 2.[32][33]
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 10: A Kind of Compulsion: 1903–1936
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 11: Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937–1939
Book
1986
–
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 12: A Patriot After All: 1940–1941
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 13: All Propaganda Is Lies: 1941–1942
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 14: Keeping Our Little Corner Clean: 1942–1943
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 15: Two Wasted Years: 1943
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 16: I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943–1944
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 17: I Belong to the Left: 1945
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 18: Smothered Under Journalism: 1946
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 19: It Is What I Think: 1947–1948
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
The Complete Works of George Orwell – Volume 20: Our Job Is to Make Life Worth Living: 1949–1950
Book
1986
—
Published by Secker and Warburg in 1986, later reprinted in 1999; volumes one to nine are reprintings of Orwell's non-fiction books and novels
"Concerning the Quartier Montparnasse"
June 1929
—
A series of articles published in French as "Ayant toujours trait au Quartier Montparnasse", which were written before the summer of 1929 and have not survived
Orwell's review of Noblesse Oblige—Another Letter to My Son by Osbert Sitwell was published in Manchester Evening News on 30 November 1944, with James Agate's response to Orwell published on 21 December 1944 and this response by Orwell appearing in the same issue.
"The Cost of Letters"
September 1946
CEJL IV, EL
Published in Horizon, also entitled "Questionnaire: The Cost of Letters"
"The Cost of Radio Programmes"
1 February 1946
CW XVIII
Article published in Tribune No. 475 (1 February 1946) p. 8.[39][19]
Ruins: Orwell's Reports as War Correspondent in France, Germany and Austria from February until June 1945
24 August 2021
—
Edited by Paul Seeliger and Stephen Kearney, published in Berlin by Comino Verlag
On Jews and Antisemitism
28 November 2022
—
Edited and annotated by Paul Seeliger, published by Comino Verlag
Diaries
2009
—
Edited by Peter Davison, 1. published in London by Harvill Secker (2009), 1. American Edition (with introduction by Christopher Hitchens) in New York by Liveright Publ. Corp. (2012)
Published by Victor Gollancz, Ltd in London on 9 January 1933 and in the United States on 30 June 1933.
"Presenting the Future"
10 June 1937
CW XI
Reprint of a short section of chapter two of The Road to Wigan Pier in The News Chronicle, (10 June 1937) p. 6. Part four in a five-day series presenting the work of "young writers already famous among critics, less well-known among the public."[48][26]
Commissioned as a part of the series "Britain in Pictures" and written around spring of 1944, this essay was not published by HarperCollins as a pamphlet until 1947 due to paper rationing in World War II
"English Poetry Since 1900"
13 June 1943
WB
Broadcast by the BBC
English Ways by Jack Hilton; with an Introduction by John Middleton Murry and Photographs by J. Dixon Scott
"Espionage Trial in Spain: 'Pressure from Outside'"
5 August 1938
CW XI, OS
Letter to the editor published in The Manchester Guardian (5 August 1938) p. 18. The same letter was also sent to The New Statesman and Nation and The Daily Herald who did not print it.[51][21]
Essays
15 October 2002
—
Published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York City and Toronto as a part of Everyman's Library, edited by John Carey. There is also a Penguin Classics edition, with a smaller collection of essays, which was published in 2000.
Review of Broken Water: An Autobiographical Excursion by James Hanley and I Wanted Wings by Beirne Lay, published in Time and Tide Vol. XVIII, No. 45 (6 November 1937) p. 1475.[54][24]
One-act play or dramatic sketch published unsigned in The Election Times No. 4, pp. 25–27. Reprinted in College Days No. 5 (9 July 1920) p. 129, also unsigned.[15][note 2][note 4]
Review of News from Tartary by Peter Fleming, The Abyssinia I Knew by General Eric Virgin translated from the Swedish by Naomi Walford, and Canoe Errant on the Nile by Major R. Raven-Hart, published in Time and Tide
Essay published in Tribune No. 462 (2 November 1945) p. 15. Completed 26 October 1945. Abridged version published in World Digest (February 1946) pp. 79–80.
A second letter to the editor in response to Maurice Percy Ashley's review of Homage to Catalonia. Published in The Times Literary Supplement (28 May 1938) p. 370.[64][21]
"Hop-Picking"
17 October 1931
CEJL I, OE
Published in The New Statesman and Nation, a longer version appears in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters I
"How a Nation is Exploited: The British Empire in Burma"
December 1928
OP
Published in French in Progrès Civique, in instalments between December 1928 and May 1929
Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd on 11 March 1940. A different publication by the same name—identical to Selected Essays—was released in the United Kingdom in 1962.
Letter to the editor, protesting against the arrest of Philip Sansom, circulated to the press by the Freedom Defence Committee and signed by Orwell and 24 others.[note 10] Published as "'Cat and Mouse' Case" in The Manchester Guardian (18 January 1946) p. 4; in Tribune No. 473 (18 January 1946) p. 13; in Peace News (18 January 1946) p. 4; as "The Sansom Case" in The Daily Herald (21 January 1946) p. 2; in The New Leader (26 January 1946) p. 7; in Freedom – Through Anarchism (26 January 1946) p. 1; as "Cat and Mouse Treatment" in the Freedom Defence Committee Bulletin No. 2 (February–March 1946) p. 2.[75][76]
Letter to the editor
June 1946
CEJL IV
Konni Zilliacus wrote an open letter in response to Orwell's "London Letter" 15, and Orwell wrote a response, both of which were published in this issue of Tribune, Summer 1946
Initially broadcast over BBC Overseas Service, printed in The Listener on 19 June 1941
"A Little Poem"
1935
—
Poem
The Lively Lady by Kenneth Roberts, War Paint by F. V. Morley, Long Shadows by Lady Sanderson, Who Goes Home? by Richard Curle, and Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
Review of Spain's Ordeal by Robert Sencourt and Franco's Rule by anonymous, published in The New English Weekly Vol. XIII, No. 11 (23 June 191938) p, 210.[78][21][note 12]
Published as a Saturday Essay in Evening Standard (9 February 1946) p. 6. Reprinted in SEAC: The All-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command (20 April 1946) p. 2.[83][19]
Published as a Saturday Essay in Evening Standard (12 January 1946) p. 6. Reprinted as "Ten Steps to a Good Cup of Char" in SEAC: The All-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command (14 February 1946) p. 2.[88][33]
Book review of No Such Liberty by Alex Comfort published in The Adelphi
Noblesse Oblige—Another Letter to My Son by Osbert Sitwell
30 November 1944
CEJL III
Book review published in Manchester Evening News. James Agate wrote a response to Orwell published on 21 December 1944 and Orwell responded to this (with a piece named "A Controversy: Agate: Orwell" in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters III) in the same issue.
"Nonsense Poetry: The Lear Omnibus Edited by R. L. Mégroz"
Letter to the editor on the Nuremberg Trials and charges made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials of conspiring with Nazi Germany. Signed by Orwell and 14 others.[note 14] Dated 25 February 1946 and published in Socialist Appeal (March 1946) p. 3. Also issued by Socialist Appeal as a handbill. Abridged version published in Forward (16 March 1946) p. 7.[43]
AAIP, CEJL IV, ColE, CW XVII, EL, ELp, OR, SaE, SE
Essay published in Polemic No. 2 (January 1946) pp. 4–14, abridged version published in The Atlantic Monthly pp. 115–119 (March 1947). Completed 12 November 1945.[13]
Review of The Crater's Edge by Stephen Bagnall and Born of the Desert by Malcolm James, published in the Manchester Evening News (10 January 1946) p. 2.[103][33]
Essay published in Polemic, and later the same year reprinted as a separate pamphlet by the Socialist Book Club as James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution
Short story published unsigned in The Election Times No. 4, pp. 29–32. Revised and reprinted in College Days No. 5 (9 July 1920) p. 146, also unsigned.[15][note 2][note 4]
Poem published in The Adelphi, signed "Eric Blair"
"Songs We Used to Sing"
19 January 1946
CW XVIII, EL
Published as a Saturday Essay in Evening Standard (19 January 1946) p. 6. Abridged version published in SEAC: The All-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command (25 March 1946).[108][33]
"Spain: Today and Yesterday"
9 October 1937
CEJL I (excerpt), CW XI, OS
Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea, Heroes of the Alcazar by Rodolphe Timmermans and Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong, published in Time and Tide Vol. XVIII, No. 41 (9 October) pp. 1334–1335.[109][24]
"Spain: The True and the False"
8 July 1938
CEJL I, CW XI, EL, OS
Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek, published in The New Leader (8 July 1938) p. 7.[110][21][note 12], with a correction published on 13 January 1939.[111]
Review of Storm Over Spain by Mairin Mitchell, Spanish Rehearsal by Arnold Lunn, Catalonia Infelix by Edgar Allison Peers, Wars of Ideas in Spain by José Castillejo and Invertebrate Spain by José Ortega y Gasset, published in Time and Tide Vol. XVIII, No. 50 (11 December 1937) pp. 1708–1709.[113][24]
"The Spanish Tragedy"
16 July 1938
CEJL I (excerpt), CW XI
Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl, The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek and Spain's Ordeal by Robert Sencourt, published in Time and Tide Vol. XIX, No. 29 (16 July 1938) pp. 1030–1031.[114][note 12]
Article published in two parts in the New English Weekly, Vol. XI, Nos. 16–20 (29 July 1937) pp. 307–308 and Vol. XI, No. 21 (2 September 1937) pp. 328–329.[115][26]
The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam, translated by Dom Justin
It is speculated that this piece was completed in 1947, but possible dates range from 1939 through June 1948. Unpublished until 1952, this essay was not printed in the United Kingdom until 1968.
Such, Such Were the Joys
1953
—
Published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in New York City in 1953
Letter to the editor in response to remarks made by Ellen Wilkinson in "France in Crisis" and by the pen-name Sirocco in "Time-Tide Diary", both in Time and Tide (22 January 1938), published in Time and Tide Vol. XIX, No. 6 (5 February 1938) pp. 164–165.[122][24]
Talking to India, by E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and Others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India
1943
—
Published by Allen & Unwin, edited with an introduction by Orwell
Reply to statements about the POUM by F.A. Frankfort (Frank Frankford) in The Daily Worker (14 September 1937) and (16 September 1937), published in the New Leader (24 September 1937) p. 3.[124][26]
"Theatre"
May 1940
—
Published in Time and Tide from May 1940 to August 1941.
Poem published unsigned in College Days No. 2, p. 42, written by Denys King-Farlow, Orwell attributed as co-author with considerable uncertainty[16][127][note 4]
Book review published in Partisan Review, July/August 1947. Also entitled "The Future of Socialism IV: Toward European Unity".
"Travel Round and Down"
17 October 1936
CEJL I, CW X
Review of Zest of Life by Johann Wöller, translated from the Danish by Claude Napier and I Took Off My Tie by Hugh Massingham, published in Time and Tide
"Treasure and Travel"
11 July 1936
CW X
Review of Treasure Trek by James Stead, Sun on Summer Seas by Major S. E. G. Ponder and Don Gypsy by Walter Starkie, published in Time and Tide
Review of '42 to '44: A Contemporary Memoir Upon Human Behaviour During the Crisis of the World Revolution by H. G. Wells, published in The Observer No. 7982 (21 May 1944), p. 3[131]
Victory or Vested Interest?
15 May 1942
—
Published by The Labour Book Service, with Orwell's "Culture and Democracy" (made up of the pieces "Fascism and Democracy" and "Patriots and Revolutionaries")
Review of The Cosmological Eye by Henry Miller, published in Tribune No. 478 (22 February 1946) p. 15. The review was followed by a critical letter to the editor from Herman Schrijver published as "Words and Mr Orwell" (1 March 1946) p. 12 and a reply by Orwell in Tribune No. 481 (15 March 1946) p. 13.[30]
"World Affairs, 1945"
1945
—
Published in Junior
"The Wounded Cricketer (Not by Walt Whitman)"
3 June 1918
CW X
Poem published unsigned in The Election Times No. 4, p. 61. Reprinted in College Days No. 5 (9 July 1920) p. 136, also unsigned.[16][note 2][note 4]
This BBC Radio series featured public figures answering questions from listeners; Orwell answered "How long is the Wigan Pier and what is the Wigan Pier?"
"The Youthful Mariner (Extract)"
9 July 1920
CW X
Poem published unsigned in College Days No. 5, pp. 156, 158; "(Extract)" is part of the original title. The last two stanzas possibly first printed as part of The Election Times No. 4[41][136][note 2][note 4]
Notes
^Usually it is fairly certain that the titles of essays are Orwell's. Reviews, articles and letters to editors, however, were often given titles or headings by editors. Orwell mainly submitted his typescripts listing only the name of the author and title of the work being reviewed. Titles listed here are those found in George Orwell: A Bibliography by Fenwick, who gives them as originally printed, whereas Davison in The Complete Works seeks to cut out all titles that cannot with certainty be attributed to Orwell. For more information see the editorial note in The Complete Works, Vol. 10.
^ abcdefThe Election Times was produced by Eric Blair (Orwell) and other Eton scholars. Issues consisted of sets of handwritten pages and the precise makeup of each issue is therefore unclear. Blair was involved in the production of five issues, out of which only one, Number 4 (3 June 1918) have survived intact. Blair is listed as business manager, Denys King-Farlow as art manager, and R. A. B. Mynors as editor. Attributions of authorship is complicated because contributions were anonymous and the producers sometimes wrote out texts other than their own.
Out of the contributions which can be attributed to Orwell with some certainty, Davison lists the three short stories, "The Adventure of the Lost Meat-card", "A Peep into the Future", and "The Slack-bob", as published in The Election Times No. 4. Fenwick additionally lists the dramatic sketch "Free Will", the poem "The Wounded Cricketer (Not Walt Whitman)", and two stanzas of the poem "The Youthful Mariner", as published in the issue. According to Davison the poems and the dramatic sketch listed by Fenwick, as well as the poem "The Photographer" and some or all of the poem "The Millionaires Pearl" may have formed part of the issue or may have been intended for another issue. All five of these uncertain additions, as well as "The Slack-bob", were, however, later reprinted in their original, or revised, form in College Days No. 5. For further discussion on attribution of the texts in The Election Times, see Davison, The Complete Works, Vol. 10, entry 29.[96][97]
^ abcFor three entries ("After Twelve", "Ode to Field Days", and "A Summer Idyll") Fenwick erroneously gives the year of publication for issue number four of College Days as 1919 instead of 1920.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqFor further discussion on attribution of the texts in College Days, see Davison, The Complete Works, Vol. 10, entry 37
^ abThe ten unsigned reviews in The Listener are attributed by Davison to Orwell from the journal's records.[31]
^Orwell's authorship of this article is disputed. In a review published in Times Higher Education, Scott Bradfield writes:
There are also times when Davison seems in too big a hurry to add a hitherto neglected item to the canon, such as his inclusion of an essay titled: "Can socialists be happy?" which was originally published under the name John Freeman. "Freeman" is the sort of nom de plume Orwell might have relished, and the essay does refer to many of Orwell's favourite subjects. But it is also just about the worst piece of writing in this entire edition, studded with the sort of wooden, thesis-driven paragraphs you might expect from a class in freshman composition. As Davison provides no compelling evidence that this essay must have been written by Orwell, the world could probably live without it.[35]
While Peter Davison—the editor of the Complete Works—writes:
George Orwell's payment book for 20 December 1943, records the sum of pounds 5.50 for a special article of 2,000 words for Tribune [...]. The name Freeman would have appealed to Orwell as a pseudonym, and the article has many social, political and literary links with Orwell [...]. The reason why Orwell chose to write as 'John Freeman' [...] is not clear. It may be that Tribune did not want its literary editor to be seen to be associated with its political pages. Possibly it was a device that allowed Orwell to be paid a special fee. Or it may be that he simply wished to see how far Tribune would let him go with his opinions.[36]
^ abIt is not possible to precisely date the material Orwell drafted during his time with the Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927.[47]
^ abOrwell reviewed Alec Brown's The Fate of the Middle Classes on two separate occasions in the months following its 1936 publication, in April for The New English Weekly and in May for The Adelphi.[57]
^ abcdOrwell conceived of the four-part series, "The Intellectual Revolt", "What Is Socialism?", "The Christian Reformers" and "Pacifism and Progress", as a single entity and possibly also intended the series to later be published as a pamphlet. He also wrote an afterword in April 1946 for a German abridged translation published in Neue Auslese aus dem Schrifttum der Gegenwart No. 8 (August 1946). The original English typescript of the afterword has not survived, but a new English translation from German is published in The Complete Works, Vol. 18.[69]
^Only the last two parts of the essay; first part "England Your England" is in Orwell's England
^ abcdOrwell reviewed the three works together under the headline "Spanish Tragedy" in Time and Tide, 16 July 1938. Searchlight on Spain was also review separately by Orwell in The New English Weekly, 21 July 1938, The Civil War in Spain, in The New Leader, 8 July 1938 and Spain's Ordeal, in The New English Weekly, 23 June 1938.[114]
^It is unknown when Orwell wrote these notes. Davison posits a date of composition in early 1939 or possible earlier, writing that "[the] notes may have been written when Orwell was working on Homage to Catalonia, but more probably after its publication." A later date is, however, also possible, Davison adds that Orwell's friend Geoffrey Gorer "guessed their date of composition as summer 1940, after Dunkirk, for someone at the War Office interested in the experience of militias as resistance fighters."[90]
^In the collection England Your England and Other Essays chapter two of The Road to Wigan Pier is reprinted as "Down the Mine" and chapter seven as "North and South".
^In the collection Selected Essays chapter two of The Road to Wigan Pier is reprinted under the title "Down the Mine".
^Reprinted as "Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party" in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. I.[134]
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