Fifteen years before the publication of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four his wife Eileen had already written and published a poem about 1984. In an extract from her forthcoming biography, Eileen: The Making of George Orwell, author Sylvia Topp describes the poem and the state of the world in which it was published in…Read more ‘End of the Century, 1984’
In 2015 we published an article, an exchange between Richard Young and L J Hurst, on the delays and puzzling editions of John Mair's thriller Never Come Back. Never Come Back had made a big impression on George Orwell when he reviewed it in 1941, and it may have been one of the paranoid…Read more The Difficult Birth of ‘Never Come Back’
as Societies Meet for the First Time * A joint meeting between the George Orwell Society and the H. G. Wells Society is to be held in Fitzroy Square, London, on Friday July 19. The meeting is open to the public – and free. Photograph of H G Wells from Wikipedia Professor Tim Crook, of…Read more Wells/Orwell Relationship under the Spotlight
A Report from the Orwell Society’s tour of Barcelona and Aragon, May 2019 by Dennis Glover Why go on a history tour? What can you possibly gain from it that you can’t learn from books? One answer is to make good friends from around the world and collect unforgettable memories of an extremely enjoyable week.…Read more Looking Back On The Spanish Tour
By Richard Lance Keeble Two new excellent ‘biographies’ of Nineteen Eighty-Four celebrate in different ways the 70th anniversary of its publication. Both Dorian Lynskey (in The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984, Picador) and D. J. Taylor (in On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Biography, Abrams Press) manage to offer new insights and information.…Read more Orwell, David Astor and the Making of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in London on June 8th, 1949. 2019 is the seventieth anniversary of its appearance, and members of the Orwell Society were asked for their thoughts. We prompted our members with: "It could be how you discovered the book, something in it that you've noticed, some feature that has entered the real…Read more Anniversary Thoughts
Eileen: The Making of George Orwell by Sylvia Topp, the first biography of Eileen Orwell, will be in bookshops in October. Sunday May 12th will be the last day people can order the book in advance and get their names printed inside the book as supporters. Apply here. While the book will be in bookshops…Read more Eileen by Sylvia Topp: Publication Near
