This collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a selection of shorter pieces that include "Shooting an Elephant", "My Country Right or Left", "Decline of an English Murder" and "A Hanging". Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to a defence of English cooking, displaying a mastery of English plain prose style and continuing to challenge, move and entertain.
Table of Contents
Why I write; the spike; a hanging; shooting an elephant; bookshop memories; Charles Dickens; boy's weeklies; my country right or left; looking back on the Spanish War; n defense of English cooking; good bad books; the sporting spirit; nonsense poetry; the prevention of literature; books versus cigarettes; decline of the English murder; some thoughts on the common toad; confessions of a book reviewer; politics versus literature - an examination of "Gulliver's Travels"; how the poor die; such, such were the joys; reflections on Gandhi.
Author Biography
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in London in 1950.
