The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Paper back, 6/21/2007
EAN 9780521675079, ISBN10: 0521675073
Paperback, 238 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
Language: English
George Orwell is regarded as the greatest political writer in English of the twentieth century. The massive critical literature on Orwell has not only become extremely specialized, and therefore somewhat inaccessible to the nonscholar, but it has also attributed to and even created misconceptions about the man, the writer and his literary legacy. For these reasons, an overview of Orwell's writing and influence is an indispensable resource. Accordingly, this 2007 Companion serves as both an introduction to Orwell's work and furnishes numerous innovative interpretations and fresh critical perspectives on it. Throughout the Companion, which includes chapters dedicated to two of Orwell's major novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, Orwell's work is placed within the context of the political and social climate of the time. His response to the Depression, British imperialism, Stalinism, World War II, and the politics of the British Left are also examined.
Preface
Notes on contributors
An Orwell calendar John Rodden
1. A political writer John Rossi and John Rodden
2. Orwell and the biographers Gordon Bowker
3. Englands his Englands
Orwell's Britain between the wars Jonathan Rose
4. The truths of experience
Orwell's nonfiction of the 1930s Margery Sabin
5. The fictional realist
novels of the 1930s Michael Levenson
6. Orwell's essays as a literary experience William Cain
7. 'My Country, Right or Left'
Orwell's patriotism John Rossi
8. Orwell and the British left Ian Williams
9. Orwell, anti-semitism, and the Holocaust John Newsinger
10. Orwell and the Cold War Robert Conquest
11. Animal Farm
history as fable M. Dickstein
12. Nineteen Eighty-Four
context and controversy B. Crick
13. Orwell, the academy, and the intellectuals Neil McLaughlin
14. Orwell for today's reader
an open letter John Rodden
15. George Orwell
a bibliographic essay Erika Gottlieb
16. Why Orwell still matters Christopher Hitchens
Further reading.