Mid Twentieth Century Novelists: George Orwell

407 Pages·1997·3.027 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Meyers

GEORGE ORWELL: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
General Editor: B.C.Southam
The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism
on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the
contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student
to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work
and its place within a literary tradition.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the
history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little
published documentary material, such as letters and diaries.
Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included
in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the
writer’s death.
GEORGE ORWELL

THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
Edited by
JEFFREY MEYERS

London and New York
First published in 1975
Reprinted in 1997 by Routledge
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
&
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1975 Jeffrey Meyers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 0–415–15923–7 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0–203–19635–X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–203–19638–4 (Glassbook Format)
For
Alfredo and Barbara

General Editor’s Preface
The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-
contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of
literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism
at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes
towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments
in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes
and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of
this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the
nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these
pressures.
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a
record of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly
productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century
writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases
the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views,
significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative
quality—perhaps even registering incomprehension!
For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials
are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended,
sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the
inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to
appear.
In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction,
discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the
author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical
tradition. The volumes will make available much material which
would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern
reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of
the ways in which literature has been read and judged.
B.C.S.

vii

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS page xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
NOTE ON THE TEXT 37
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
1 GEORGE ORWELL, Introduction to the French edition (1935) 39
2 Unsigned notice, TLS, 12 January 1933 41
3 C.DAY LEWIS, Adelphi, February 1933 42
4 W.H.DAVIES, New Statesman and Nation, 18 March 1933 43
5 Unsigned notice, Nation, 6 September 1933 45
6 JAMES FARRELL, New Republic, 11 October 1933 46
7 DANIEL GEORGE, Tribune, 24 January 1941 47
Burmese Days (1934)
8 SEAN O’FAOLAIN, Spectator, 28 June 1935 50
9 Unsigned notice, TLS, 18 July 1935 51
10 G.W.STONIER, Fortnightly, August 1935 53
11 MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, World Review, June 1950 54
A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
12 L.P.HARTLEY, Observer, 10 March 1935 58
13 V.S.PRITCHETT, Spectator, 22 March 1935 59
14 PETER QUENNELL, New Statesman and Nation, 23 March 1935 61
15 MICHAEL SAYERS, Adelphi, August 1935 62
16 GEOFFREY STONE, Commonweal, 18 June 1937 64
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
17 WILLIAM PLOMER, Spectator, 24 April 1936 65
18 CYRIL CONNOLLY, New Statesman and Nation, 25 April 1936 67
19 Unsigned notice, TLS, 2 May 1936 68
20 RICHARD REES, Adelphi, June 1936 69
21 KENNETH MACPHERSON, Life and Letters Today, Autumn 1936 70
22 ANTHONY WEST, New Yorker, 28 January 1956 71
23 HENRY POPKIN, Commonweal, 23 March 1956 80
24 DOROTHY VAN GHENT, Yale Review, Spring 1956 82
ix