Essays By George Orwell

The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature.

Orwell is best remembered for his political commentary as a left-wing anti-totalitarian. As he explained in the essay "Why I Write" (1946), "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." To that end, Orwell used his fiction as well as his journalism to defend his political convictions. He first achieved widespread acclaim with his fictional novella ''Animal Farm'' and cemented his place in history with the publication of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' shortly before his death. While fiction accounts for a small fraction of his total output, these two novels are his best-selling works, having sold almost fifty million copies in sixty-two languages by 2007—more than any other pair of books by a twentieth-century author.

Orwell wrote non-fiction—including book reviews, editorials, and investigative journalism—for a variety of British periodicals. In his lifetime he published hundreds of articles including several regular columns in British newsweeklies related to literary and cultural criticism as well as his explicitly political writing. In addition he wrote book-length investigations of poverty in Britain in the form of ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' and ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' and one of the first retrospectives on the Spanish Civil War in ''Homage to Catalonia''. Between 1941 and 1946 he also wrote fifteen "London Letters" for the American political and literary quarterly ''Partisan Review'', the first of which appeared in the issue dated March–April 1941.

Only two compilations of Orwell's body of work were published in his lifetime, but since his death over a dozen collected editions have appeared. Two attempts have been made at comprehensive collections: ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters'' in four volumes (1968, 1970), co-edited by Ian Angus and Orwell's widow Sonia Brownell; and ''The Complete Works of George Orwell'', in 20 volumes, edited by Peter Davison, which began publication in the mid-1980s. The latter includes an addendum, ''The Lost Orwell'' (2007).

The impact of Orwell's large corpus is manifested in additions to the Western canon such as ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', its subjection to continued public notice and scholarly analyses, and the changes to vernacular English it has effected—notably the adoption of "Orwellian" as a description of totalitarian societies.

Books: non-fiction and novels

Orwell wrote six novels: ''Burmese Days'', ''A Clergyman's Daughter'', ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', ''Coming Up for Air'', ''Animal Farm'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Most of these were semi-autobiographical. ''Burmese Days'' was inspired by his period working as an imperial policeman and is fictionalized; ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' follows a young woman who passes out from overwork and wakes up an amnesiac, forced to wander the countryside as she finds herself, eventually losing her belief in God, despite being the daughter of a clergyman. ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' and ''Coming Up for Air'' are examinations of the British class system. ''Animal Farm'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' are his most famous novels.

In addition to his novels Orwell also wrote three non-fiction books. ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' records his experiences tramping in those two cities. ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' is initially a study of poverty in the North of England, but ends with an extended autobiographical essay describing some of Orwell's experiences with poverty. ''Homage to Catalonia'' recounts his experiences as a volunteer fighting fascism with the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification in anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.

*''Down and Out in Paris and London'' (9 January 1933, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
*''Burmese Days'' (25 October 1934, Harper & Brothers)
*''A Clergyman's Daughter'' (11 March 1935, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
*''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' (20 April 1936, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
*''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (February 1937, Left Book Club edition; 8 March 1937 Victor Gollancz Ltd edition for the general public)
*''Homage to Catalonia'' (25 April 1938, Secker and Warburg)
*''Coming Up for Air'' (12 June 1939, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
*''Animal Farm'' (17 August 1945, Secker and Warburg)
*''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (8 June 1949, Secker and Warburg)

Articles

Orwell wrote hundreds of essays, book reviews and editorials. His insights into linguistics, literature and politics—in particular anti-fascism, anti-communism, and democratic socialism—continued to be influential decades after his death. Over a dozen of these were published in collections during his life—'' Inside the Whale and Other Essays'' by his original publisher Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1940, and '' Critical Essays'' by Secker and Warburg in 1946. The latter press also published the collections ''Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays'' in 1950 (republished by Penguin in 2003) and ''England Your England and Other Essays'' in 1953.

Since his death many collections of essays have appeared, with the first attempt at a comprehensive collection being the four-volume ''Collected Essays, Letters and Journalism of George Orwell'' edited by Ian Angus and Sonia Brownell, which was published by Secker and Warburg and Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1968–1970. Peter Davison of De Montfort University spent 17 years researching and correcting the entirety of Orwell's works with Angus and Sheila Davison, and devoted the last eleven volumes of the twenty-volume series ''The Complete Works of George Orwell'' to essays, letters, and journal entries. The entire series was initially printed by Secker and Warburg in 1986, finished by Random House in 1998, and revised between 2000 and 2002.

Pamphlets

Starting with ''The Lion and the Unicorn'' (1941), several of Orwell's longer essays took the form of pamphlets:
*'' The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius'' was printed by his publisher Secker and Warburg as Searchlight Books No. 1 on 19 February 1941.
*''Betrayal of the Left'' was printed by his other regular publisher Victor Gollancz Ltd. in 1941, with material from Victor Gollancz, John Strachey, and others.
*''Victory or Vested Interest?'' came from The Labour Book Service on 15 May 1942, with Orwell's "Culture and Democracy" (made up of the pieces "Fascism and Democracy" and "Patriots and Revolutionaries") amongst others.
*'' Talking to India'', by E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and Others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India'' was published in 1943 by Allen & Unwin, edited with an introduction by Orwell.
*'' James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution'' – Socialist Book Centre, printing of ''Second Thoughts on James Burnham'' under this title in July 1946.
*'' The English People'' was printed by HarperCollins 1947.
*''British Pamphleteers Volume 1: From the 16th Century the 18th Century'' from Allan Wingate, spring 1948 was co-edited by Orwell and Reginald Reynolds with an introduction by Orwell.

Poems

Orwell was not widely known for writing verse, but he did publish several poems that have survived, including many written during his school days:

*"Awake! Young Men of England" (1914)
*"" (1929)
*"A Dressed Man and a Naked Man" (1933)
*"A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been" (1935)
*"Ironic Poem About Prostitution" (written prior to 1936)
*"Kitchener" (1916)
*"The Lesser Evil" (1924)
*"A Little Poem" (1935)
*"On a Ruined Farm Near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory" (1934)
*"Our Minds Are Married, but We Are Too Young" (1918)
*"The Pagan" (1918)
*"The Wounded Cricketer" (1920)
*"Poem from Burma" (1922–1927)
*"Romance" (1925)
*"Sometimes in the Middle Autumn Days" (1933)
*"Suggested by a Toothpaste Advertisement" (1918–1919)
*"Summer-like for an Instant" (1933)
*"As One Non-Combatant to Another" (1943)

In October 2015 Finlay Publisher, for The Orwell Society, published ''George Orwell: The Complete Poetry'', compiled and presented by Dione Venables.

Editing

In addition to the pamphlets ''British Pamphleteers Volume 1: From the 16th Century the 18th Century'' and ''Talking to India, by E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and Others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India'', Orwell edited two newspapers during his Eton years—''College Days''/''The Colleger'' (1917) and ''Election Times'' (1917–1921). While working for the BBC
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