George Orwell (Writers and their Work) - Softcover

Douglas Kerr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0746309724 ISBN 13: 9780746309728

Publisher: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

A fresh account of the development and achievement of the novelist and essayist who became Britain's greatest political writer of modern times. George Orwell (1903-1950) is one of the most important, admired, and controversial British writers of modern times. This new study examines his writing - the novels, journalism, essays and polemics - by looking at the context and development of his passionately held views, and at the genres, representations and narratives in which they found expression. Douglas Kerr gives an account of Orwell's whole writing career, from its awkward beginnings in Down and Out in Paris and London to the ambiguous triumphs of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, tracing its relation to four contexts - the East, England, Europe, and the nightmare police-state of Oceania. In particular he argues for the importance of Orwell's youthful service in the colonial police in Burma, and for the way his experience of the East and of what he called 'the dirty work of empire' shaped the writer's emerging understanding of oppression and freedom, inequality and justice.

About this title

About the Author

Douglas Kerr is Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Hong Kong.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northcote House Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0746309724
• ISBN 13: 9780746309728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128