Orwell: Essays: Introduction by John Carey Twarda oprawa – 15 października 2002

This essay collection is fantastic, but how can you charge 40$ for a book and send it with this kind of damage?

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Roberto Parra

A great giant book you should own and read slowly

Opinia napisana w Meksyku dnia 1 stycznia 2017

Great book. I would recommend reading the most famous essays first, such as "Shooting an Elephant", and then just picking out essays at random. You always find surprising insights in Orwell's prose.

Bill Hughes

George Orwell: A Prophet for our Times

Opinia napisana w Stanach Zjednoczonych dnia 26 czerwca 2006

This book is a delightful read. There were some real gems in it. A few of the articles were outdated, but even those had real value, since they demonstrated the author's love of the written word, and his keen ability to see and analyze individuals and events and to express himself in such cogent prose. One of the essays that stood out for me was "The Hanging." In this one, the author's descriptive abilities are at their highest. He is able to cut to the heart of the matter and leave the reader with the impression that he (or she) had just witnessed a barbaric act of judicial murder! That horrific scene was set in Burma, as was another of his classics, "Shooting an Elephant." In that one, in which Orwell himself is the shooter, he was able to again dig deeper into himself and come up with this brilliant analysis: "I perceive in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys."

There are many essays in this tome, in which, If you read them between the lines, you can see how the soon-to-be novel, "1984" was coming into Orwell's mind-along with his book, "Animal Farm," ranging not too far behind. Orwell's mostly unpleasant boarding school experiences, which he recounts here, undoubtedly served his future literary ambitions, as well as his short stay in one of the provincial jails outside of London. His WWII experiences in radio with the BBC; his dangerous sojourns into Spain during its vicious Civil War; along with his visits to Paris, all informed his psyche. They were rich food for his imagination and for his rising hatred of government censorship and propaganda, and totalitarianism, whether under a Fascist or a Communist regime. I also found the ten page "Introduction" to the book, by the distinguished man of letters, Professor John Carey of Oxford, a special treat.

George Orwell's prophetic "1984," may be coming true as I write. The world is a lot scarier place, particularly here in the U.S., with the so-called USA Patriot Act on the book, rampant and unlawful government spying and a draconian department of 140,000 employees, called the "Homeland Security Agency" on the loose, set against a background of perpetual war. Orwell's tome weighed in at 1,370 pages. If he were alive today and covering recent happenings generated by the Bush-Cheney Gang, he could, no doubt, come up with twice that many pages! If you live in America in 2006 and you aren't concerned about the fragile state of our civil liberties, then you are either asleep or in a deep trance. And, if you have any common sense left, you will wake up and fight back, before "Big Brother" takes over completely. Democracy isn't a slogan or a spectator's sport. It only works if the people show up and participate. Orwell's "1984" and the insightful essays in this book may be your last warning!

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Jordan M. Poss

Great collection

Opinia napisana w Stanach Zjednoczonych dnia 1 października 2006

I, like many, many other people the world over, read 1984 and Animal Farm and loved them. I first read Animal Farm my freshman year in college, and as soon as I was finished reading it I dove headlong into 1984. Powerful books, books that I still think about these many years later. But it wasn't until I read Orwell's essays that I got a really good idea of who the man behind those novels was.

Orwell's essays are really fascinating, for reasons he explained best himself. In the essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell puts forward six tips on writing, all of them hinging on the simple idea of clarity. Orwell is a small island of clarity and concreteness in what he--and I--came to see as a world flooded with vagueness and dishonesty. His essays are clear--he says precisely what he wants as simply as he can, and the ideas stick with you.

This collection of Orwell's complete essays is worth its weight in gold. The essays are arranged chronologically, and Orwell's output was so prodigious that, read straight through, this book could almost count as an autobiography. Here we have, with his masterful clarity, Orwell's thoughts on everything in the world between 1928 and his death in 1950.

George Orwell was a really fascinating person, and his essays continue to fascinate me. I don't agree with everything he says--on the contrary, I disagree with the great majority of it--but I an compelled to admire him as a writer and a thinker--his writing style and the wit with which he engaged his opponents certainly makes him one of the greatest writers of the last century.

Highly recommended.

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Meer Almemar

Beautifully Formatted

Opinia napisana w Stanach Zjednoczonych dnia 16 marca 2024

A nice way to have all his essays bundled up in this beautifully formatted book.

Vincent Poirier

The whole man: his greatest and his not-so-great essays

Opinia napisana w Stanach Zjednoczonych dnia 1 listopada 2011

Of course you'll find in these pages George Orwell's most important essays. His account of a hanging in Burma, his literary essays on Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling, and one of the most important essays I've ever read, his Notes on Nationalism.

The above are finished, well-polished essays. Orwell crafted them and carefully worked out their logic, correcting the minor contradictions that come from setting down one's thoughts too quickly. Orwell fans will find much of interest here as we are also treated to a large collection of less polished work, for instance many book reviews and 80 installments of his "As I Please" column written for the Tribune. While these reveal Orwell to be sometimes naïve, it also shows us how he clarified his initial thoughts and ideas into finished masterpiece essays.

Political and intellectual thought at the time decidedly favoured socialism as the way forward for mankind. Orwell was no exception to this trend. Laissez-faire capitalism had shown it was prone to collapse and that it could not prevent murderous wars. Socialism appealed to us on two levels. First it promised equitable distribution of wealth and second it promoted international understanding.

In theory, anyway.

As committed as he was to socialism and its ideals, Orwell was too perceptive, honest and courageous not to realize that things weren't going as expected. He also realized that as much as he disliked current British and American politics, they were better than the totalitarian fascist and communist regimes many of his intellectual counterparts favoured. During World War II he was no pacifist because he understood that pacifists were only free to express themselves when protected by their own military. These essays show he said so frequently and unambiguously.

All in all, a wonderful collection of essays that reveal the thoughts of the whole man; a must have for Orwell fans.

A word on this edition. I don't make it a point of collecting Everyman's Library editions, but when there's a book I want available from this collection, I am always satisfied at the quality of the physical book. Cloth bound, creamy acid-free paper, above average page layout. It looks and feels very nice in one's hands.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

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