Contains a large piece of writings leading to Homage to Catalonia, also research for Down and Out in London and Paris and The Road to Wigan Pier.

1984, being his last book, is probably the most representative of Orwell's political beliefs and writing style, and probably has influenced most people's idea of Orwell as a person. However less well-formed his previous stances and sentences were, I've still nevertheless enjoyed this collection for showing me the man Orwell was before he became Orwell.

While I have not always agreed with him (he sure does have some dated views about women and non-English people which I want to attribute to his context but he's also so thoughtful and considered when presenting his viewpoints about socialism but you also couldn't and shouldn't have expected him to be perfect), it has still been a pleasure to get to know him via his personal letters and to track his growth as a person, a writer, and something of a social activist.

Favourite bits: My favourite sections are really the private Orwell persona, mainly whenever he mentioned his home life, taking care of his goats and chickens and garden. My favourite activity was to pick out clues for the germination of ideas which eventually lead to 1984. Also interesting, his wife Eileen worked for the government's Censorship Department. How I chuckled!

Aside: Ever since I read Down and Out in Paris and London a few weeks ago, I've been hankering for some young Orwell nonfiction.

Reading this collection has been like catching up with an old friend. This familiarity has only been increased whenever I recognise Orwell's casual references to some of his contemporaries, such as Mr Murry - lover and husband of Katherine Mansfield, he found Adelphi which Orwell often wrote for -, or Oswald - as in the fascist brother-in-law of my favourite Mitford, Decca, who I suddenly recall seemed to have been pals with a Sonia Orwell -, or John Lehmann to whom he pitched Shooting an Elephant who is of course the brother of Rosamond Lehmann.

It's a thrill when your literary worlds collide and the more I read, the more I really understand the people who organise their bookshelves by "I think these writers/books would enjoy/loathe being next to each other and have great conversations". ( )

The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Vols 1-5
Orwell is a victim of his own versatility. Because he transitioned from journalist to novelist his posthumous fame centres on the novels 1984 and Animal Farm. Yet for most of his life Orwell was a working journalist and eloquent witness to the political ructions of the 1930s and 1940s. These volumes of his collected journalism are not merely a masterclass in journalistic prose, they’re history written in real time. No one skewered the hypocrisies of his age with greater precision and no one was more willing to own up to his own mistakes and misplaced loyalties. In my view, if you’re a journalist and Orwell isn’t one of your heroes then something’s gone wrong.

By David Olusoga in The Guardian, 8 January 2017

Describes my thoughts well. ( )

Très, très impressionné par la justesse de ton et d'analyse, mais surtout, incroyablement, je regardé maintes fois la date de parution des articles... Et oui, Orwell est nettement en avance sur son temps. ( )

I haven't read any of Orwell's books beyond Animal Farm and 1984, so I don't know how much overlap there is. This book contains extensive notes of Orwell's travels that turned into the Wigan Pier book. And certainly there was a huge transformation very apparent out of his experience in the Spanish Civil War: his awareness of the corruption of the Communists. This part of the book reminded me of Doris Lessing's Golden Notebook. Stalin has always been the devil for me, so it is a bit difficult to comprehend the disappointment of folks for whom that was a revelation.

A delightful surprise here was the essay on Charles Dickens. I am no deep thinker or wide reader in these realms. Probably much profounder insight on Dickens is well known in the right circles. But for me, it was just great to have my eyes opened. Orwell is a very generous writer. These days I am just tired of books where the author struts on a stage that is impossibly above me. In a bookstore recently I opened a book of Badiou that dove immediately into some parable of Hegel, into the profound depths. I don't object to such diving, of course. No doubt there is some elite audience for which that parable is already well known at the shallower depths, that is ready for that next step. What little expertise I have is more mathematical: certainly there are math books that start this way, that just start e.g. with ring theory or some such and move immediately into some specialized problem. Ah, even with math books, it is possible to guide the general reader too, in short stages. Of course we all get lost soon enough, unless we are willing to put in the work. But the author can still cut steps into the cliff the whole way.

Orwell, here, doesn't push like that. He is not a professional political theorist or historian or any of that. He is writing for a general audience, and not trying to put himself above his audience.

This is definitely a grand fun book. We get to see all these fun personal details... his laying hens and his potato patch. His settling on the pseudonym George Orwell. An easy book to pick up now and again and work through in small-to-medium bites. I look forward to the later volumes! ( )