Critical Companion to George Orwell

465 Pages·2009·3.58 MB·English

by  Quinn, Edward.

CritiCal Companion to
George Orwell

CritiCal Companion to
George Orwell
A Literary Reference to His Life and Work
Edward Quinn
Critical Companion to George Orwell
Copyright © 2009 by Edward Quinn
all rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in
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recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission
in writing from the publisher. For information contact:
Facts On File, inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Quinn, Edward, 1932–
Critical companion to George Orwell : a literary reference to his life and work /
Edward Quinn.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-0-8160-7091-6 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Orwell, George, 1903–1950—
Handbooks, manuals, etc. i. Title.
Pr6029.r8Z765 2009
828'.912—dc22 2008026727
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C
ontents
acknowledgments vii
introduction ix
Part i: Biography 1
Part ii: works a–Z 37
Part iii: related People, Places, and Topics 323
Part iV: appendices 399
George Orwell Chronology 401
a Glossary of newspeak 412
Bibliography of Orwell’s works 414
Bibliography of Secondary Sources 415
index 427

A
Cknowledgments
in recent years, anyone who sets out to write about a tireless internet researcher, who put in my grate-
Orwell must acknowledge a massive debt to Peter ful arms mounds of Orwell-related material, and
davison, the editor of the The Complete Works of Karl Malkoff, who played a comparable role. i am
George Orwell, a 20 volume editorial masterpiece (a also pleased to mention my key keyboarders, Liam
21st, follow-up volume, The Lost Orwell, was pub- Kirby, Caitlin Quinn, and adam Kirby, and also
lished in 2006). in the first nine volumes, each of the the support i received from heroic david Quinn
full-length books written by Orwell is reprinted with and renaissance man richard Louria during criti-
scrupulous concern for accuracy and the author’s cal computer crises. Bill Herman contributed two
probable intentions. The remaining 11 volumes con- excellent photos of contemporary Paris. i also ben-
tain the letters; essays; poems; BBC war commentar- efited from the advice and comments of arthur
ies; “as i Please” columns; book, theater, and movie waldhorn, Leonard Kriegel, Earl rovit, Paul dolan,
reviews; journal and diary entries; and selected let- Pat Forrestal, deirdre Quinn, Joseph Jordan, and
ters written by others, such as Orwell’s wife, Eileen. Bill and Pat driscoll. i am indebted to Stephen
Furthermore, these pieces, not simply reprinted, are wright of the Orwell archive at the university
annotated with clarifying notes identifying people, College London (uCL) for his help in securing
places, and events. Orwell has only a simple stone most of the photographs in the book. Jeff Solo-
above his grave, but now, thanks to Peter davison, way at Facts On File has consistently and patiently
he has a much more significant monument, advised and usually consented with his usual calm
My thanks to Philip Bader, who first began efficiency. Thanks also to Jeff’s assistant, Miranda
work on this volume but had to leave it because Ganzer, and to the library of the City university of
of other commitments. Specific acknowledgments new York and the grand old Main reading room
are indicated by his name following his contribu- of the new York Public. and deepest gratitude
tions. among the many other people to whom to Barbara Gleason, who with her usual tact and
thanks are due, i wish to single out Larry Fleischer, patience, kept the show going.
vii

I
ntroduCtIon
There is no objective evidence to support the he was not a novelist at all—but he has survived to
view that when Eric Blair opted for the pen emerge as, not the finest, but the most influential,
name George Orwell he was consciously choosing English writer of the 20th century and of the open-
a new identity or hoping to erase his past. in fact, ing decade of the 21st.
he never completely repudiated his birth name. as to the nature of that influence, it is noth-
Even on the brink of death, he specified that his ing if not various and complex. Orwell spelled out
gravestone should read “Eric arthur Blair,” without loud and clear who he thought he was, but his
so much as an allusion to his, at the time, mildly readers, because there have been so many, spread
famous nom de plume. He may have felt that the around the globe and living in radically different
sudden popularity he experienced in the last five societies, have naturally enough picked and chosen
years of his life would soon pass and that calling their own version. although the one characteriza-
attention to that name would seem pretentious, tion Orwell and most of his readers agree on is that
an ironic example of the fragility and transience he was a political writer, he was not interested in
of fame. His own toughest critic, he would have politics qua politics. it was the ethical implications
found it difficult to believe that well into the next of politics that constituted his real subject. He was
century, the noun Orwell and its adjectival form a moralist writing at a time when the great moral
Orwellian, would, in a substantial part of the world, questions were contained and expressed in political
have acquired a life of its own. terms: the twin evils of fascism and Soviet com-
it was an article of critical faith with him that munism, the lesser evil of capitalism, and the quali-
the final test of a writer’s value was survival. in his fied good of democratic socialism, being four of
wonderful essay “Charles dickens,” he cites dick- the major ones. He envisioned the possible rise of
ens’s continued popularity, as much as his criti- superstates that would contain elements of all four,
cal reputation, as evidence of the greatness of his in which individual freedom might be ruthlessly
achievement. Orwell wrote this essay in 1938, 68 suppressed, but that strong possibility did not, as
years after the death of dickens. it seems appropri- is frequently asserted, result in despair on his part.
ate to note that, 58 years after his own death in instead, he chose to fight back, employing a literary
1950, Orwell’s presence, among readers and critics, weapon he had absorbed through a lifelong read-
is more vital and pervasive than it was the day he ing and rereading of Gullliver’s Travels—satire. He
died, with no indication of a significant slackening had learned from Jonathan Swift that satire, when
of interest. all of which is not to claim an equiva- keyed to a general tendency in human nature,
lence of the two literary figures. dickens is one of could maintain its vitality long after its immediate
the masters of English literature. Orwell was not a targets had passed into oblivion. His immediate tar-
great novelist—by his own overly critical account, get both in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four
ix