''Critical Essays'' (1946) is a collection of wartime pieces by

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...

. It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies of

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

. It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books.

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

::First published in ''

Inside the Whale and Other Essays ''Inside the Whale and Other Essays'' is a book of essays written by George Orwell in 1940. It includes the eponymous essay " Inside the Whale". Background ''Inside the Whale'' was published by Victor Gollancz as a book of essays on 11 March 19 ...

'' (1940). *

Boys' Weeklies "Boys' Weeklies" is an essay by George Orwell in which he analyses those weekly story-paper publications for boys which were current around 1940. After being published in ''Horizon'' in abridged form, it was published alongside two of his other p ...

::First published in an abridged form in ''

Horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

'', March 1940. Reprinted in ''Inside the Whale and Other Essays'' (1940). *

Wells Wells most commonly refers to: * Wells, Somerset, a cathedral city in Somerset, England * Well, an excavation or structure created in the ground * Wells (name) Wells may also refer to: Places Canada *Wells, British Columbia England * Wells ...

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...

and the World State ::Response to H. G. Wells ''Guide to the New World''. ::First published in ''Horizon'', August 1941. * The Art of Donald McGill ::First published in ''Horizon'', February 1942. *

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

::Response to ''

A Choice of Kipling's Verse ''A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling'' is a book first published in December 1941 (by Faber and Faber in UK, and by Charles Scribner's Sons in U.S.A.). It is in two parts. The first part is an essa ...

'', edited by

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

. ::First published in ''Horizon'', February 1942. *

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

:: Review of

V. K. Narayana Menon V. K. Narayana Menon (Thrissur Vadakke Kurupath Narayana Menon) (1911–1997) was a scholar of classical Indian dance and Indian classical music. He was one of the prominent art critics of India and a Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship. Educati ...

''The Development of William Butler Yeats''. ::First published in ''Horizon'', January 1943. *Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

::Response to ''

The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí ''The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí'' is an autobiography by the internationally renowned artist Salvador Dalí published in 1942 by Dial Press. The book was written in French and translated into English by Haakon Chevalier. It covers his family ...

''. ::According to a note by Orwell, "'Benefit of Clergy' made a sort of phantom appearance in the ''Saturday Book'' for 1944. The book was in print when its publishers, Messrs Hutchinson, decided that this essay must be suppressed on grounds of obscenity. It was accordingly cut out of each copy, though for technical reasons it was impossible to remove its title from the table of contents." Several copies, including Orwell's own, escaped this excision. *

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

::Unpublished before ''Critical Essays''. *

Raffles and Miss Blandish "Raffles and Miss Blandish" is an essay by the English writer George Orwell first published in ''Horizon'' in October 1944 as "The Ethics of the Detective Story from Raffles to Miss Blandish". Dwight Macdonald published the essay in ''politics'' ...

::First published in ''Horizon'', October 1944. *In Defence of

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeev ...

::First published in ''Windmill'', no. 2, uly1945.

Publication

In late 1944 Orwell, worrying about the ephemerality of magazine publication, began to collect a volume of his best essays. The resulting collection appeared under the imprint of

Secker & Warburg Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, ...

on 14 February 1946, with a print-run of 3028 copies. The following May a second impression of 5632 copies was issued, with some small corrections. The US edition of 5000 copies was published in April 1946 by

Reynal & Hitchcock Reynal and Hitchcock was a publishing company in New York City. Founded in 1933 by Eugene Reynal and Curtice Hitchcock, in 1948 it was absorbed by Harcourt, Brace.'' American Authors and Books: 1640 to Present Day'' Third Revised Edition, Crown ...

, and retitled ''Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture''. A reprint in paperback dropped the subtitle.

Themes

The

blurb A blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a piece of creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others. Blurbs were originally printed on the back or rear dust jacket of a book, and are now also fou ...

to the first edition described some of the essays as being "among the very few attempts that have been made in England to study popular art seriously". Orwell thought seemingly frivolous popular culture, such as crime fiction, comic postcards, and the

Billy Bunter William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly ...

stories, to be worth studying for the light it throws on contemporary attitudes. Applying this approach to the subjects considered in ''Critical Essays'' he tended to find that they showed the innovations of his own time to be harsh and unfeeling compared to the old-fashioned humanity of traditional popular forms. Another theme is that of literary style, which Orwell thought to be the inevitable result of its writer's world-view and the message he wanted to get across. He considered the English language of the 1940s to be in a degenerate state, and held that political discourse was inevitably corrupted as a result.

Critical reception

Orwell himself, writing before he had completed ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final ...

'', said that he thought ''Critical Essays'' one of his three most important books, along with ''

Animal Farm ''Animal Farm'' is a beast fable, in the form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to crea ...

'' and ''

Homage to Catalonia ''Homage to Catalonia'' is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army. Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little com ...

''. His contemporaries in the world of criticism also largely saw the book's merits. The journalist

Tosco Fyvel Raphael Joseph Feiwel (1907 – 22 June 1985), better known as Tosco R. Fyvel or T. R. Fyvel (), was an writer, journalist and literary editor. In 1936–1937, he was active in the Zionist movement in Palestine, then under the control of the Briti ...

, writing in ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...

'', acclaimed Orwell as "a national figure as a critic, satirist and political journalist", while disagreeing with Orwell's view that the

Attlee government Clement Attlee was invited by King George VI to form the Attlee ministry in the United Kingdom in July 1945, succeeding Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party had won a landslide victory at the 1945 gener ...

was uncommitted to the introduction a fully socialist society. In the Catholic paper ''

The Tablet ''The Tablet'' is a Catholic international weekly review published in London. Brendan Walsh, previously literary editor and then acting editor, was appointed editor in July 2017. History ''The Tablet'' was launched in 1840 by a Quaker convert ...

'',

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...

predictably deplored Orwell's lack of religious feeling, but also wrote that the essays "represent at its best the new humanism of the common man", and that Orwell was "outstandingly the wisest" of the new critics.

Middleton Murry John Middleton Murry (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. ...

, who likewise criticised Orwell's secularism, nevertheless called Orwell and

Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...

the two most gifted critics of their generation. V. S. Pritchett considered the essays "brilliant examples of political anthropology applied to literature by a non-conforming mind".

Eric Bentley Eric Russell Bentley (September 14, 1916 – August 5, 2020) was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator. In 1998, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the New ...

saw the book as "a dirge for nineteenth-century liberalism", and, like

Irving Howe Irving Howe (; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Early years Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in The Bronx, New York. He was the son o ...

, thought it represented Orwell at his best.

Edmund Wilson Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...

, a critic to whom most others compared Orwell, called him "the only contemporary master" of sociological criticism, praising him for his courage in rejecting the reigning orthodoxies, and for "a prose style that is both downright and disciplined". A recent survey of Orwell's work endorses his own high opinion of its importance, calling it "Orwell at his best", a book which "showed Orwell's talent for finding deep meaning in otherwise trivial matters", while

Bernard Crick Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as ...

said that Orwell's essays "may well constitute his lasting claim to greatness as a writer".

Footnotes

References

* * * *
Critical essays by essaywing
{{Crimethink 1940 essays 1941 essays 1942 essays 1943 essays 1944 essays 1945 essays 1946 books Aesthetics literature Books by George Orwell Books of literary criticism Contemporary philosophical literature English-language books Essay collections Essays about literature Essays in literary criticism Philosophy essays Secker & Warburg books

Contents

Publication

Themes

Critical reception

Footnotes

References