Orwell's England

Description

All of Orwell's brilliant writing on England and Englishness collected in a single volume Much of George Orwell's best writing, brought together in this comprehensive collection, is concerned with England, a country that he found both endearing and frustrating. In the brilliantly perceptive The English People, he lists the national characteristics as 'suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and an obsession with sport'. The Road to Wigan Pier, his blistering account of poverty in the north of England, and his essays on class and the horrors of life at private school violently attack what he famously called 'the most class-ridden country under the sun'. Yet other writings here also ruminate on the merits of cricket, gardening, roast dinners, pubs, cups of tea and seaside postcards, showing Orwell's attitude to Englishness in all its lively complexity.

George Orwell (Author) Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. Peter Davison (External Editor) Peter Davison is Research Professor of English at De Montfort University, Leicester. He edited the twenty volumes of Orwell's collected works, as well as his diaries.