Facing Unpleasant Facts

Facing Unpleasant Facts
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009-10-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0547417764

Essays by the author of 1984 on topics from “remembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War” (Publishers Weekly). George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived. “As soon as he began to write something,” comments George Packer in his foreword, “it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.” Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell’s development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as “Shooting an Elephant” with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell’s boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex. “Best known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1937-1939

Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1937-1939
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Harvill Secker
Total Pages: 530
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

These years saw the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and Coming Up for Air. The most important document that has come to light regarding Orwell's Spanish experiences is the deposition charging him and Eileen with espionage and high treason, a charge unknown to them. This is fully analysed and can now be read in the context of the disputes that then divided the Left, well illustrated by the letters and documents printed here, notably his bitter response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War. The correspondence includes that with Yvonne Davet, who undertook the Translation of Orwell's books into French; George Kopp, Orwell's commandent in Spain; and a number of Eileen's letters. Orwell's Diary of Events Leading Up to the War' (2 July - 1 September 1939); his Domestic Diary (9 August 1938 - 29 April 1940), which records in detail his attempts at running a smallholding; his abstracts from Daily Worker and News Chronical reports on the Spanish Civil War; and his Marrakech Notebook with illustrations are reproduced. Many letters not previously published are included, and there is a large number of reviews. This volume also includes a sequence of letters that throws a completely new light on Orwell's personal relationships.

Facing Unpleasant Facts

Facing Unpleasant Facts
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2009-10-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0547417764

Essays by the author of 1984 on topics from “remembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War” (Publishers Weekly). George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived. “As soon as he began to write something,” comments George Packer in his foreword, “it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.” Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell’s development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as “Shooting an Elephant” with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell’s boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex. “Best known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Red Britain

Red Britain
Author: Matthew Taunton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192549928

Red Britain sets out a provocative rethinking of the cultural politics of mid-century Britain by drawing attention to the extent, diversity, and longevity of the cultural effects of the Russian Revolution. Drawing on new archival research and historical scholarship, this book explores the conceptual, discursive, and formal reverberations of the Bolshevik Revolution in British literature and culture. It provides new insight into canonical writers including Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Dorothy Richardson, H.G Wells, and Raymond Williams, as well bringing to attention a cast of less-studied writers, intellectuals, journalists, and visitors to the Soviet Union. Red Britain shows that the cultural resonances of the Russian Revolution are more far-reaching and various than has previously been acknowledged. Each of the five chapters takes as its subject one particular problem or debate, and investigates the ways in which it was politicised as a result of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of the Soviet state. The chapters focus on the idea of the future; numbers and arithmetic; law and justice; debates around agriculture and landowning; and finally orality, literacy, and religion. In all of these spheres, Red Britain shows how the medievalist, romantic, oral, pastoral, anarchic, and ethical emphases of English socialism clashed with, and were sometimes overwritten by, futurist, utilitarian, literate, urban, statist, and economistic ideas associated with the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Politics of 1930s British Literature

The Politics of 1930s British Literature
Author: Natasha Periyan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-06-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350019852

Winner of the 2018 International Standing Conference for the History of Education's First Book Award Drawing on a rich array of archival sources and historical detail, The Politics of 1930s British Literature tells the story of a school-minded decade and illuminates new readings of the politics and aesthetics of 1930s literature. In a period of shifting political claims, educational policy shaped writers' social and gender ideals. This book explores how a wide array of writers including Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Winifred Holtby and Graham Greene were informed by their pedagogic work. It considers the ways in which education influenced writers' analysis of literary style and their conception of future literary forms. The Politics of 1930s British Literature argues that to those perennial symbols of the 1930s, the loudspeaker and the gramophone, should be added the textbook and the blackboard.

Transatlantic Anarchism during the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, 1936-1939

Transatlantic Anarchism during the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, 1936-1939
Author: Morris Brodie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2020-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000051528

Between 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War showcased anarchism to the world. News of the revolution in Spain energised a moribund international anarchist movement, and activists from across the globe flocked to Spain to fight against fascism and build the revolution behind the front lines. Those that stayed at home set up groups and newspapers to send money, weapons and solidarity to their Spanish comrades. This book charts this little-known phenomenon through a transnational case study of anarchists from Britain, Ireland and the United States, using a thematic approach to place their efforts in the wider context of the civil war, the anarchist movement and the international left.

Narrative Essays

Narrative Essays
Author: George Orwell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2009
Genre: English essays
ISBN: 9781846553271

A wonderful selection of Orwell's finest narrative essays George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist. From his earliest published article in 1928 to his untimely death in 1950, he produced an extraordinary array of short non-fiction that reflected - and illuminated - the fraught times in which he lived and wrote. 'As soon as he began to write something,' comments George Packer in his foreword to this new two-volume collection, 'it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge - in short, to think - as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.' This collection charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites classics such as 'Shooting an Elephant' with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these narrative essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plain-spoken and brilliantly complex.