A Patriot After All

A Patriot After All

1940-1941

Summary

Volume 12 of The Complete Works of George Orwell

For the twenty-month period of this volume, there are reproduced 123 book, 38 theatre, and 43 film reviews. Inside the Whale, Orwell's first collection of essays, and The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius are reprinted here.

Later in that year he gave a series of broadcasts on literary criticism, the texts of which are reproduced. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary; its entries are here printed chronologically with his reviews, essays, and letters and it is here that Orwell makes the first reference to his wish to live on a Hebridean island. It was in 1941 that Orwell began his series of 'London Letters' for Partisan Review. The volume also includes Orwell's lecture notes for instructing members of his Home Guard platoon.

Reviews

  • An epoch-making edition...few books published this year will be as worth reading as any one of them
    Peter Carey, Sunday Times

About the author

George Orwell

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.
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