Riding Down from Bangor is an

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

published in 1946 by the English

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

George Orwell. In it, he muses on 19th-century American children's literature and the type of society it portrayed.

Background

The article was prompted by the appearance of a new edition of '' Helen's Babies'' by the American author John Habberton. The novel first published in 1876 was subtitled: "Helen's Babies with some account of their ways...innocent, crafty, angelic, impish, witching and repulsive by THEIR LATEST VICTIM." and was set in New York. The article appeared 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 th ...

'' on 22 November 1946.

Summary

The appearance of ''Helen's Babies'' prompts Orwell's thoughts about the impression of the world made by books read in childhood. His impressions of America came down to the barefoot boy in the schoolroom aspiring to become president, and the tall man leaning against a wooden paling making occasional observations. These ideas were derived from books like ''

Tom Sawyer Thomas Sawyer () is the titular character of the Mark Twain novel ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), '' Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (1894), and '' Tom Sawyer, ...

'', ''

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ''Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm'' is a classic American 1903 children's novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin that tells the story of Rebecca Rowena Randall and her aunts, one stern and one kind, in the fictional village of Riverboro, Maine. Rebecca's joy ...

'', ''

What Katy Did ''What Katy Did'' is an 1872 children's book written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under her pen name "Susan Coolidge". It follows the adventures of a twelve-year-old American girl, Katy Carr, and her family who live in the fictional lakeside Ohio to ...

'', and '' Little Women''. He then thinks of the song " Riding down from Bangor" based on a railway journey from Bangor, Maine. Orwell identifies these works as having a "sweet innocence" and "faint vulgarity of language". Although he acknowledges the crude and anarchic element in many American works, he notes that novels set on the East Coast describe a very sedate and prim society governed by etiquette. The characters may seem ridiculous, but they have an admirable integrity and unthinking piety. Orwell regrets that more recent American material such as Superman and other

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

s is no longer suitable for children. Seeing nineteenth century America as a "rich empty country" with few social problems and room for everyone who worked hard, Orwell concludes that "the civilization of nineteenth century America was capitalist civilization at its best."

References

External links

Text of essay ''Riding Down from Bangor''
{{Crimethink Essays by George Orwell 1946 essays Works originally published in Tribune (magazine)

Background

Summary

See also

References

External links