Way back in 1983, I assiduously avoided being guilted into reading 1984, and contented myself with Burmese Days. Since then I have read 1984, and I’m currently making my way through “The Road to Wiggan Pier.” Aside from the dated references (especially 1930’s wages), I’m finding it a superbly tonic read, and it’s keeping alive my hunger to vote.
What, besides Animal Farm and Down and Out in Europe, would you consider the essential Orwell?
Homage to Catalonia, in which he describes his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War and the infighting among leftist groups in Spain at the time.
While I enjoy all three books mentioned, as well as Down and Out in Paris and London, I find myself reading Orwell’s essays again and again.
Coming up for air is very good and usually ignored by people. Quite poignant.
A clerygymans daughter is excellent especially if you read it as semi autobiographical. Mr Warburton is a great rogue.
I enjoyed Burmese Days.
BTW, it’s Wigan, not Wiggan.
OK, I should probably read the OP properly next time :smack:
I second Down and Out in Paris and London.
And his essays, most particularly Politics and the English Language. Anyone who wants to consider writing anything should read it first. Most people don’t seem to have.
And Shooting an Elephant.
And his essay on the coming of spring in which he becomes almost lyrical, in a Orwell kind of way:
"The bombs are piling up in the warehouses, the police are prowling the cities, but the Earth is still going around the sun, and as much as the dictators and beaurcrates disapprove of the process they are unable to prevent it. "
Oh wait, I forgot Such, Such Were the Joys. Problem is so little of him doesn’t seem essential.
By the way, is Down and Out in Paris and London meant to be fiction, nonfiction, or some mix of the two? I ask because one chapter (The Spike) is collected verbatim as one of his essays, and none of his other essays could be confused with fiction.
I haven’t been able to read very many of his minor works (i.e., works other than Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm) but I have read and very much enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London. I also thoroughly enjoy all his essays. I wish his minor works were better known; the two works that are well-known paint him as relentlessly pessimistic and rather dour, something that is not reflected in his essays especially.
Speaking of that, here is a collection of fifty of his essays, containing ones not in the site linked above.
Perhaps even Orwell should have:
I don’t take nearly the dim view of the essay they do: They, in their zeal to debunk Orwell’s grammatical faux pas, completely miss the actual point of his essay:
My fave Orwell essays (based, mainly, on the amount of thought they provoked in me and the new things they taught me about Orwell’s times and places):
“Boys’ Weeklies” (Never even heard of Billy Bunter before I read this and the referenced stories are almost impossible to find in libraries – which does not detract from the impact of the essay.)
“Inside the Whale” (Never read Tropic of Cancer either, but it doesn’t matter; all English majors should read this essay, with dissects all British literary trends of the '20s and '30s while evoking a zeitgeist that seriously feared the imminent destruction of Western Civilization by rising fascism.)
“The Art of Donald McGill” (Believe it or not, that innocuous postcard artist was later prosecuted for obscenity.)
“The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” (I learned more about British culture from this than from all the episodes of Masterpiece Theater I ever watched.)
“Mark Twain: The Licensed Jester”
“Politics and the English Language”
“Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travelks”
Notes on Nationalism is fascinating. It also contains one of my all-time favorite lines: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”