George Orwell

Starred review from April 8, 2013
Orwell’s keen insight and acerbic wit reverberate throughout these selected letters, culled from more than 10 volumes to offer a comprehensive view of his life and personality. Ranging from 1911, during Orwell’s school days, until his death in 1950, the letters focus on his professional life in the 1920s and ’30s—years he spent in Burma and Paris—especially his time as a journalist in Spain and North Africa, his BBC employment during WWII, his productive years in Jura writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, and his struggle with tuberculosis. While there are touching personal letters—for example to his first wife, Eileen—many in the collection dwell on European politics, British colonialism, WWII, as well as on literature and Orwell’s own novels. He comes across as unsentimental, his realism growing both out of profound compassion and, as he confesses in a letter to Henry Miller, a “sort of belly to earth attitude” that made him “feel uneasy when I get away from the ordinary world where grass is green.” Editor Davison furthermore includes many letters to or about Orwell, providing useful perspective on the character of the man whom one admirer described as “less imperfect than anyone else I had ever met.” These insights, plus extensive footnotes and contextual information, make the book an unusually gratifying read for Orwell enthusiasts and casual readers alike. 28 illus. Agent: Bill Hamilton, A.M. Heath.

June 1, 2013
A representative selection, culled from the 20-volume Complete Works, which Davison co-edited, of correspondence by and to 20th-century England's fiercest literary opponent of totalitarianism. There are very few letters from the childhood of Eric Blair (Orwell's real name) and none from the years as an imperial policeman in Burma that formed his anticolonial and socialist views; the collection really begins in 1934, not long after the publication of Down and Out in Paris and London introduced the 31-year-old author under the pen name George Orwell. Most are by Orwell himself, but gaps in the historical record are filled by correspondence from others. The letters of his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, are particularly valuable; livelier and much more personal than the author's, they give intimate glimpses of the couple's home life and sometimes-fraught relationship. Their warmth makes palpable the awful loss inflicted by 39-year-old Eileen's death during surgery in 1945, a trauma only hinted at in Orwell's dignified, reticent account of the event. In general, he is a brisk, businesslike correspondent; among the few exceptions are affectionate references to his adopted son and a few emotional 1946 letters to his London neighbor Anne Popham, which add some nuance to the 2007 controversy over charges that Orwell's wooing style was aggressively close to rape. Readers seeking insights into the creation of Animal Farm or 1984 will find only a few scattered sentences, and nonfiction, such as The Road to Wigan Pier, is similarly referred to mostly in passing. The correspondence does convey Orwell's strong, principled political positions, especially his revulsion against fellow leftists who "set up a double standard of political morality, one for the U.S.S.R. and the other for the rest of the world." Grim letters chronicling the worsening tuberculosis that killed him remind us how prematurely we lost this ardent voice for a single standard of truthfulness and common decency. Illuminates Orwell's political convictions and gives fleeting but vivid glimpses of his personal qualities.

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Starred review from June 1, 2013

Following the publication of his comprehensive diaries and 63 years after his death, this generous selection of English writer Orwell's (1903-50; Homage to Catalonia; Down and Out in Paris and London) letters was compiled by the indefatigable Orwell scholar Davison. Over 1,700 of Orwell's letters appear in The Complete Works (co-edited by Davison, 1998), from which this volume draws heavily. An earlier selection appeared in the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968). Newly discovered letters are included here, as well as affectionate and witty correspondence written by Orwell's first wife, Eileen. Davison's chronological arrangement and accompanied introductory notes contextualize his subject's writing periods. Dating from 1911, the earliest letter is a short note that Eric Blair (Orwell) sent to his mother from St. Cyprian's School. Only two letters represent the 1920s when the author spent five years in Burma as a policeman and then worked at a series of menial jobs in England and Paris. Starting in 1932, though, his correspondence grew steadily. Davison describes Orwell's letter writing to friends, colleagues, and strangers alike as "businesslike." The many letters to his literary agent Leonard Moore offer fascinating details about writing projects, planned books, setbacks, and wrangling with publishers. The book supplies useful biographical notes on Orwell's correspondents, a time line, and an extensive index. VERDICT Orwell the man truly emerges in these revealing letters; this essential companion volume to the Diaries will be devoured by legions of Orwell fans and scholars.--Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

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