George Orwell Diaries

Editor’s Introduction

George Orwell was an inveterate writer of diaries and lists, he filled notebooks with his ideas, and into them sketched drafts of poems – ‘ ’Twas on a Tuesday morning’ and ‘Joseph Higgs, late of this parish’ – and copied and pasted items of information from newspapers, recipes, garden hints, and so forth. He made lists of nationalist leaders, popular songs, words and phrases in Latin, French and other languages. He famously made a list of those he regarded as crypto-communists and fellow-travellers and he noted his extensive reading in the last year of his life. For many years he collected pamphlets (now in the British Library) and started to catalogue them. And he carefully noted what he had been paid for his writings to aid in the declaration of his earnings for his income tax return. Unfortunately, only his earnings from July 1943 to December 1945 survive; ironically, those payments are listed in a notebook that Eileen had used when working in Whitehall in the Censorship Department. Although he usually gave no thought to the preservation of the manuscripts of his published work – what survive (for example, the typescripts of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four) probably do so simply because he did not live long enough to destroy them. His diaries, however, he kept and they were often typed up. Eleven survive. They were not Pepysian-like private diaries written in a code but, in the main, straightforward records of his life, his observations of Nature, and the political events of his time. When he was away from Wallington in September 1939, Eileen filled in his Domestic Diary and in the winter of 1947–48, when he was in hospital, his sister Avril noted on his behalf such basic information as the state of the weather and work undertaken around Barnhill.

It is as certain as things can be that a twelfth, and possibly a thirteenth diary, are secreted away in the NKVD Archive in Moscow. In March 1996, Professor Miklos Kun, grandson of the Hungarian Communist leader, Béla Kun, told me that the NKVD had targeted Orwell and he knew of a file in its Archive devoted to him. (Béla Kun, having fallen out with the Soviet authorities, was probably shot in a Soviet Gulag on August 29, 1938, although an earlier Soviet account states that he died in one of its prisons on November 30, 1939.) Unfortunately the archive was closed to the public before it could be examined. Orwell wrote to Charles Doran on August 2, 1937 (CW, XI, p. 386) that documents had been seized from his wife’s room at the Continental Hotel in Barcelona. In Homage to Catalonia he states that six plainsclothes policemen took ‘my diaries’ (p. 164). Given Orwell’s addiction to writing diaries, it is at least possible that he also wrote a diary when he was serving with the police in Burma but it is unlikely that such a diary will surface. In his Domestic Diary for June 1, 1946, Orwell refers to a rabbit-skin recipe ‘in the other diary’ – but that diary has not been identified. Despite evident losses, these eleven diaries, and the diary entries in two notebooks, provide, with some gaps, a personal record of Orwell’s life from his venture into hop-picking in 1931 until his final days in hospital.

Orwell’s diary entries from August 9, 1938, accompanied by excellent maps of Orwell’s travels at the time of the diary entries, have been posted day by day precisely seventy years later on the Orwell Prize website, www.orwelldiaries.wordpress.com.

In presenting Orwell’s diaries here I have endeavoured to retain characteristics typical of Orwell as a diarist rather than as Orwell the perfectionist author whilst ensuring the text is easily readable. Trivial errors and misspellings such as ‘actualy’ for ‘actually’ have been corrected silently and his habit of writing ‘i.e.’ and e.g.’ as ‘ie.’ and ‘eg.’ are retained, but, for example, names of journals are italicized. Significant changes are noted. Orwell’s capitalization was often erratic (so one has ‘Canterbury bells’ and ‘Canterbury Bells’ an entry or two later) and frequently omitted. Words are only capitalized if (as in this example) not to do so might cause confusion. It is noticeable that Eileen’s spelling, when she writes up the diary, is more accurate than is her husband’s. Thus, she has ‘scabious’ and he has ‘scabius’. Both spellings are retained. I have identified as many individuals noted only by initials as I can and have tended to spell out (using square brackets) names frequently mentioned – e.g. A[vril] and B[ill]. Orwell’s dating practice has been modified to accord with American convention for this U.S. edition. If Orwell typed up his diaries from their handwritten originals only a few interesting variants are noted. Most of Orwell’s handwritten corrections in typewritten final versions are taken in silently. Full details can be found in the Complete Works of George Orwell. References in footnotes to Complete Works are indicated by the letters CW and by volume and page. The notes here, whilst omitting the minor variants noted above, are considerably amplified from those in The Complete Works.

Grateful thanks are due to The Orwell Estate, in particular Richard Blair and Bill Hamilton, and to Gill Furlong, Archivist, UCL Special Collections Library, for allowing these Diaries to be published in this edition. I am also very grateful to Myra Jones for casting such an acute eye over the proofs.

Finally: given that Orwell was so averse to his biography being written, it is ironic that these diaries offer a virtual autobiography of his life and opinions for so much of his life.

Orwell’s own footnotes are indicated (as was his practice) by symbols (e.g. *, †, §). The superior degree sign (º) is used selectively to indicate one of his idiosyncratic spellings but most are left unnoticed. Editorial footnotes are placed as close as is practicably convenient to their references.