George Orwell ALiteraryLife Peter Davison GEOR.GEORWELL Literary Lives General Editor: Richard Dutton, Professor of English Lancaster University This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most admired and influential English-language authors. Volumes follow the outline of writers' working lives, not in the spirit of traditional biography, but aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing. A list of the published titles in this seriesfoHouls overleaf. Publishedtitlesinclude CedricC.Brown MichaelO'Neill JOHN MILTON PERCYBYSSHESHELLEY PeterDavison LeoneeOrmond GEORGE ORWELL ALFREDTENNYSON Richard Dutton GeorgeParfitt WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE JOHNDONNE Jan Fergus GeraldRoberts JANE AUSTEN GERARD MANLEYHOPKINS JamesGibson FelicityRosslyn THOMASHARDY ALEXANDERPOPE KennethGraham Tony Sharpe HENRYJAMES T.S.ELIOT PaulHammond GrahameSmith JOHNDRYDEN CHARLESDICKENS w. DavidKay GaryWaller BEN JONSON EDMUNDSPENSER MaryLago CedricWatts E.M.FORSTER JOSEPH CONRAD AlasdairD.F. Macrae JohnWilliams W.B.YEATS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH JosephMcMinn Tom Winnifrithand EdwardChitham JONATHANSWIFT CHARLOTTEAND EMILY BRONTE KerryMcSweeney JohnWorthen GEORGE ELIOT (MARIANEVANS) D.H. LAWRENCE JohnMepham VIRGINIA WOOLF George Orwell A Literary Life Peter Davison * © PeterDavison1996 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmission of this publication maybemadewithoutwritten permission. Noparagraphofthis publication maybereproduced,copiedor transmittedsavewithwritten permissionorinaccordance with the provisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988, orunderthe termsofanylicencepermittinglimitedcopying issuedbythe CopyrightLicensingAgency,90TottenhamCourt Road,londonW1POlP. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorisedact inrelationto this publication maybeliableto criminalprosecution andcivil claimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedhisrightto beidentifiedasthe authorofthis workinaccordance withthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. PublishedbyPAlGRAVE Houndmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG21 6XSand 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,N.Y.10010 Companiesandrepresentativesthroughoutthe world PAlGRAVEisthe newglobalacademic imprintof St.Martin'sPressllCScholarlyand ReferenceDivisionand PalgravePublishersltd(formerlyMacmillanPressLtd). OutsideNorthAmerica ISBN0-333-54151-X InNorthAmerica ISBN0-312-12820-1 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitable forrecyclingand madefromfullymanaged andsustainedforest sources. Acataloguerecordforthis bookisavailablefromthe BritishLibrary. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 PrintedandboundinGreat Britainby AntonyRoweLtd,Chippenham,Wiltshire Dedicated to my wife, Sheila, with love and gratitude, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of our first meeting, 30 May 1945 This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction ix Chronology xv 1 Getting Started The Family 1 The Buddicoms 8 St Cyprian's and Eton 12 2 Foreign Fields Burma Days 15 Days in London and Paris 24 Down and Out: Financial Returns 30 3 The Profession of Author Blair and Orwell 38 Burmese Days 45 The Rejected 'Pot-boilers' 54 4 The Turning-Point: Wigan and Spain The Road to Wigan Pier 67 Homageto Catalonia 79 5 Orwell as Reviewer and Essayist 88 6 Events Leading Up to the War and the BBC Years 111 7 The Last Five Years War Correspondent 121 Animal Farm 123 Nineteen Eighty-Four 129 8 Conclusion 140 Notes 148 Bibliography 164 Index 168 vii This page intentionally left blank Introduction Jacintha Buddicom first saw Eric Blair when he was 11: he was standing on his head, the better to be noticed, he said.' If studies and biographical accounts are anything to go by, for a man who wishedno biographyto be writtenabouthim, he hasbeenwelland variously remembered. In addition to two excellent biographies, Bernard Crick's George Orwell: A Life (1980, 1982, and 1992) and Michael Shelden's Orwell: TheAuthorisedBiography (1991),and ear lier, PeterStanskyand WilliamAbrahams, TheUnknownOrwelland Orwell: TheTransformation (1972and 1979),onmy shelves alone are studies by Keith Aldritt, John Atkins, Laurence Brander, Jacintha Buddicom, Tosco Fyvel, Bernard Gensane, J.R.Hammond, Rayner Heppenstall, Christopher Hollis, Tom Hopkinson, Lynette Hunter, Robert A. Lee, PeterLewis, Jeffrey Meyers, DaphnePatai, AlokRai, Sir Richard Rees, Patrick Reilly, John Rodden, David Smith and Michael Mosher, Alan Sandison, Ian Slater, William Steinhoff, EdwardM.Thomas,John Thompson,W.J.West, RaymondWilliams, Ian Willison (his VeL Librarianship Diploma Thesis (1953) is in valuable), George Woodcock, David Wykes, and Alex Zwerdling, plusessay-collectionsandmemoirseditedby AudreyCoppardand BernardCrick, MiriamGross, IrvingHowe,ChristopherNorris, Peter Stansky, Stephen Wadhams, Courtney T. Wemyss and Alexej Ugrinsky. There are books I do not have and there are countless essays (notably those by Maung Htin Aung, Elisaveta Fen, Robert Pearce, and Nicolas Walter). One might conclude that standing on one'shead does getone noticed. Moreto the point, it is obviousthat Orwell has been and continues to be an abiding source of interest, to friends, enemies and objective scholars. At the same time doubt must arise as to whether there is very much more to be said. This study is chiefly concerned with what influenced Orwell people, reading, circumstance - and his relationship with publish ers and editors. It is drawn from experience of editing TheComplete Works of George Orwell.The first nine volumes of this edition give correctedtexts ofnineofOrwell'sbooks.Intheirhardbackeditions, published by Seeker &Warburg, 1986-87, textual notes and colla tions record what happened in print to what Orwell wrote; how, for example, A Clergyman'sDaughterwas savagely cut and Keep the ix