The Orwell Diaries (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Orwell, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141191546 ISBN 13: 9780141191546

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2010

Synopsis

George Orwell was an inveterate keeper of diaries. This title presents eleven of them, covering the period 1931-1949, and follows Orwell from his early years as a writer to his last literary notebook.

About this title

Review:

Among the vivifying things about his Diaries, issued now in one volume for the first time, is how they restore some first-person flesh and blood to what can seem like his disembodied head. What s more, they show Orwell to be nearly Jeffersonian in his combined passion for politics and for the natural world, not merely for fishing but also for the enlightened and fervent cultivation of vegetables, fruit trees, animals and flowers These diaries show him with his hands covered in fresh dirt, hard at work, in sync with the seasons, curious about everything under the sun, tending to what he needed and grateful for beauty as well as sustenance. They present a man in full. --Dwight Garner"

Never before published in the United States, this wonderfully annotated collection of George Orwell s diaries from 1931 to 1949 is sure to fascinate any fan of his work. From his down and out years to his stint working at the BBC during WWII ( something halfway between a girls school and a lunatic asylum . Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy. ), the reader can catch a glimpse of this essential English writer s internal life, and watch the ideas that became Animal Farm and 1984 bloom, percolate, and grow. --Emily Temple"

Reading the Diaries end-to-end in a single volume offers us a different take on Orwell: less as a thinker, or a figure of political conscience, than as a complex and dimensional human being. --David Ulin"

Orwell lived in London during most of World War II, including during the Battle of Britain. Entries during this period have the author s defining features on display, including unimpeachable intellectual honesty, concern about the degradation of truth, physical courage, and unpretentious writing All the traits that made Orwell so great can be found in the Diaries. --Jordan Michael Smith"

A window into the way Orwell's mind worked. --Barry Gewen"

How appropriate that the political moralist George Orwell (1903-50) should be published by a company called Liveright! Orwell, who despised every form of careerism, instinctively gravitated to the kind of quiet rural existence that we associate with ancient Greek philosophers or Anglican clergyman of the 18th century. Certainly, these diaries reveal that the author of Animal Farm was happiest cultivating his garden, observing the weather, enjoying the beauty of spring flowers and watching over the health of his hens. --Michael Dirda"

It is a blessing, then, to now have the opportunity to read his Diaries, edited meticulously by Peter Davison, who as the editor of the twenty volumes of Orwell's Complete Works has an unequaled knowledge of the material They throw a revealing light on Orwell the thinker, and offer welcome stimulus to revisit the books and essays in which that mind left its lasting imprint. --Brooke Allen"

Read with care, George Orwell s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics. They furnish us with a more intimate picture of a man who, committed to the struggles of the mechanized and modern world, was also drawn by the rhythms of the wild, the rural, and the remote.--Christopher Hitchens"

Orwell s achievement grew out of seemingly modest virtues: decency; good, hard sense; and clean, clear prose. Yet they added up to something monumental The diaries as a whole do exactly what you would expect: They confirm his greatness.--Craig Seligman"

A window into the way Orwell's mind worked.--Barry Gewen

Book Description:

The authoritative text of George Orwell's diaries, collected in one volume for the first time

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0141191546
• ISBN 13: 9780141191546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Davison Peter