I Belong to the Left, 1945
I Belong to the Left, 1945

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Harvill Secker

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 9780436205545

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On 29 March 1945 Orwell's wife Eileen died, aged 39. Her last, long, very moving letters to her husband are printed here. Less than six months later the novel that she might be said to have nurtured and which gave Orwell world-wide fame, Animal Farm, was published. For a little over three months Orwell worked as a War Correspondent for The Observer and the Manchester Evening News. As well as 74 books specifically reviewed, many others were discussed briefly in essays and in her column 'As I Please'. 'Politics and the English Language', one of Orwell's most important essays, was immediately reprinted for journalists of The Observer and News of the World as a guide to good writing. His defence of P.G. Wodehouse, printed here, was written at a time when Wodehouse was still under a cloud. Essays and articles he wrote for The Observer, Manchester Evening News and Evening Standard are reprinted; correspondence shows he had written the first twelve pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eileen's will and Orwell's first notes for his literary executor are also reproduced. Orwell kept a careful account of what he earned to assist in making his income tax return. Only one such record has survived (for 12 July 1943 to 31 December 1945) and it is reproduced here, fully annotated.

A Patriot After All, 1940-1941
A Patriot After All, 1940-1941

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 0436205408

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Spanning a period of 20 months, this volume is part of The Complete Works of George Orwell, available as a separate book. It includes essays, film, book and theatre reviews and the transcripts of a series of broadcasts on literary criticism.

George Orwell: My country right or left, 1940-1943
George Orwell: My country right or left, 1940-1943

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9781567921342

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George Orwell is a major figure in twentieth-century literature. The author of Down and Out in Paris and London, Nineteen Eighty-four, and Animal Farm, he published ten books and two collections of essays during his lifetime - but in terms of actual words, produced much more than seems possible for someone who died at the age of forty-six and was often struggling against poverty and ill health. His essays, letters, and journalism are among the most memorable, lucid, and intelligent ever written, the work of a master craftsman and a brilliant mind. Taken as a whole they form an essential collection, and read in toto and sequentially, they provide a remarkably literary self-portrait of an engaged, and consistently engaging, writer.

Orwell and Marxism
Orwell and Marxism

Author: Philip Bounds

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2009-03-16

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0857715356

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Whether as a fighter in the Spanish Civil War, an advocate of patriotic Socialism or a left-wing opponent of the Soviet Union, George Orwell was the ultimate outsider in politics - insecure, scornful of orthodoxies, cussedly independent. Best known today as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell also wrote seven other full-length books and and a vast number of essays, articles and reviews. A pioneering cultural critic, he addressed a range of important issues including art, literature, 'Englishness', mass communication and the spectre of totalitarianism. Famously describing his own background as 'lower-upper-middle class', Orwell had a complex relationship with Marxism and all his work reflects the influence of British communism. In this thoughtful and original study Philip Bounds argues that Orwell's writings effectively took the form of a dialogue with the leading British Marxists of his day. Bounds shows that Orwell often agreed with the Marxists and built on their insights in his writings, while on other occasions he used his disagreements with them as the basis of his own critical position. Through close analysis of Orwell's writings as well as his historical and literary context, Bounds has produced an important study of one of the iconic writers of the 20th century. 'Orwell and Marxism' offers a thorough introduction to Orwell the intellectual, reviving his reputation as a serious cultural thinker and documenting his most important influences, as well as a convincing portrait of British Marxism and society in the 1930s and 40s.

Something We Have That They Don't
Something We Have That They Don't

Author: Steve & Mark Clark & Ford

Publisher: University of Iowa Press

Published: 2004-04

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1587294761

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There is some connexion (I like the way the English spell it They’re so clever about some things Probably smarter generally than we are Although there is supposed to be something We have that they don’'t—'don’t ask me What it is. . . .) —John Ashbery, “Tenth Symphony” Something We Have That They Don’t presents a variety of essays on the relationship between British and American poetry since 1925. The essays collected here all explore some aspect of the rich and complex history of Anglo-American poetic relations of the last seventy years. Since the dawn of Modernism poets either side of the Atlantic have frequently inspired each other’s developments, from Frost’s galvanizing advice to Edward Thomas to rearrange his prose as verse, to Eliot’s and Auden’s enormous influence on the poetry of their adopted nations (“whichever Auden is,” Eliot once replied when asked if he were a British or an American poet, “I suppose, I must be the other”); from the impact of Charles Olson and other Black Mountain poets on J. H. Prynne and the Cambridge School, to the widespread influence of Frank O'Hara and Robert Lowell on a diverse range of contemporary British poets. Clark and Ford’s study aims to chart some of the currents of these ever-shifting relations. Poets discussed in these essays include John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, T. S. Eliot, Mark Ford, Robert Graves, Thom Gunn, Lee Harwood, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Hofmann, Susan Howe, Robert Lowell, and W. B. Yeats. “Poetry and sovereignty,” Philip Larkin remarked in an interview of 1982, “are very primitive things”: these essays consider the ways in which even seemingly very “unprimitive” poetries can be seen as reflecting and engaging with issues of national sovereignty and self-interest, and in the process they pose a series of fascinating questions about the national narratives that currently dominate definitions of the British and American poetic traditions. This innovative and exciting new collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of British and American poetry and comparative literature.

Recharting Media Studies
Recharting Media Studies

Author: Philip Bounds

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9783039110155

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Scholars in Media Studies increasingly take the view that our understanding of the history of the discipline is deeply inadequate. It is now widely recognised that a large number of important media analysts have simply been omitted from the standard histories. This book aims to fill in some of the gaps by examining the work of eleven neglected writers, each of whom has made a seminal contribution to the analysis of the media but whose work rarely appears in student textbooks, anthologies and readers. In keeping with the interdisciplinary ambitions of contemporary Media Studies, the selected thinkers are drawn from a wide range of historical periods and intellectual backgrounds. There are chapters on sociologists, creative writers, cultural theorists, art critics, journalists and even ancient Greek philosophers. The aims of the book are by no means purely antiquarian. The contributors believe that a revival of interest in the work of their chosen writers can go a long way towards revitalising Media Studies, especially by (1) drawing attention to a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches which have yet to be adequately exploited, (2) suggesting new areas of research, and (3) transforming our understanding of the historical development of Media Studies.