George Orwell Diaries

Short List of Further Reading

All Orwell’s writings – and, with their accompanying notes, they take up some 9,000 pages – are to be found in The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison, assisted by Ian Angus and Sheila Davison, 1998; second paperback edition, 2000–02. The books take up the first nine volumes and are published by Penguin with the same pagination of the texts. The Facsimile of the Manuscript of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ was published in 1984; a supplementary volume, The Lost Orwell, was published in 2006. In 2001 Penguin Books published four collections of essays, edited by Peter Davison, which have notes additional to those in the Complete Works. These are:

Orwell in Spain (includes Homage to Catalonia); 393 pages

Orwell’s England (includes The Road to Wigan Pier); 432 pages, with 32 pages of plates

Orwell and the Dispossessed (includes Down and Out in Paris and London); 424 pages

Orwell and Politics (includes Animal Farm); 537 pages

References to the Complete Works are given as CW+ Volume number in roman figures + page(s), e.g. CW, XX, pp. 210–11. References to books listed below are given by the author’s name + page number – e.g. Crick, p. 482, except for Orwell Remembered and Remembering Orwell, which are so designated + page number(s).

There are very many critical studies of George Orwell and his writings. To simplify matters, only details of recent biographies and half-a-dozen very recent critical studies are listed here. From these it will be fairly straightforward to seek out earlier biographies and studies.

Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick, Orwell Remembered, 1984 (in the text as Orwell Remembered)

Stephen Wadhams, Remembering Orwell, 1984 (as Remembering Orwell).

John Thompson, Orwell’s London (with many photographs by Philippa Scoones), 1984.

Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, (1980), 1992 edition with important new Appendix (as Crick).

T. R. Fyvel, George Orwell: A Personal Memoir, 1982 (as Fyvel).

Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorised Biography, 1991 (UK edition) (as Shelden).

Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation, 2000.

Gordon Bowker, George Orwell, 2003 (as Bowker).

Scott Lucas, Orwell, 2003.

D. J. Taylor, Orwell: The Life, 2003 (as Taylor).

Jacintha Buddicom, Eric & Us (1974), with an important Postscript by Dione Venables, 2006.

The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, edited by John Rodden, 2007.

Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s Victory, 2002 (as Why Orwell Matters in USA).

Douglas Kerr, George Orwell (in the Writers and their Work series), 2003.

Emma Larkin, Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, 2004.

John Rodden, Every Intellectual’s Big Brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings, 2006. This gives a valuable account of the Centenary Conference, ‘George Orwell: An Exploration of His World and Legacy’, held at Wellesley College, near Boston, Massachusetts in May 2003. In many ways it takes further John Rodden’s The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell, 1989.

Daniel J. Leab, Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of ‘Animal Farm’, 2007.

Sir Richard Rees, George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory, 1961 (as George Orwell).

Loraine Saunders, The Unsung Artistry of George Orwell: The Novels from ‘Burmese Days’ to ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, 2008.

Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961), third edn. 1977 (as Thomas).

www.finlay-publisher.com – this is the website of Eric & Us. This publishes essays by leading scholars every two months together with comments from readers. It is run by Dione Vennables who wrote the Postcript to the second edition to Jacintha Buddicom’s book of that title (2006).

www.theorwellprize.co.uk – which not only gives details of events related to the annual Orwell Prize, but also details of many other events. It reproduces some of the articles from the Eric & Us website and is currently reproducing Orwell’s diary entries day by day seventy years on. Associated with that is a Google map showing where Orwell was when he wrote his diary entries. It is run by Professor Jane Seaton and Gavin Freeguard.