Orwell To The Present

This essential introductory guide provides a comprehensive critical survey of the diverse and rich body of literary writing produced in England in the postwar period. John Brannigan explores the relationship between literature and history, and analyses how poets, playwrights and novelists have revisited notions of Englishness, represented Englands of the past, and sought to make new 'maps' of English culture and society. Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 combines original readings of familiar texts with wide-ranging explorations of the principal themes and historical and cultural contexts of literature since the end of the Second World War. Writers considered in detail include: Martin Amis, Simon Armitage, Pat Barker, John Betjeman, Edward Bond, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Graham Swift and Evelyn Waugh.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel", often published as "1984", is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

This essential introductory guide provides a comprehensive critical survey of the diverse and rich body of literary writing produced in England in the postwar period. John Brannigan explores the relationship between literature and history, and analyses how poets, playwrights and novelists have revisited notions of Englishness, represented Englands of the past, and sought to make new 'maps' of English culture and society. Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 combines original readings of familiar texts with wide-ranging explorations of the principal themes and historical and cultural contexts of literature since the end of the Second World War. Writers considered in detail include: Martin Amis, Simon Armitage, Pat Barker, John Betjeman, Edward Bond, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Graham Swift and Evelyn Waugh.

The Crystal Spirit, George Woodcock's intellectual biography of George Orwell, won the 1966 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. In this book he turns his attention to 1984, the novel which expresses Orwell's fears for the future, and his exhortations against totalitarianism. First-hand experience with twentieth-century politics combines with extensive knowledge of history and literature to give Woodcock's writing authority and immediacy. His ten-year friendship with George Orwell adds a personal tone to this work of criticism, biography, political history, and current events.

"Rich and compelling. . .Lynskey’s account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory.” --George Packer, The Atlantic An authoritative, wide-ranging, and incredibly timely history of 1984--its literary sources, its composition by Orwell, its deep and lasting effect on the Cold War, and its vast influence throughout world culture at every level, from high to pop. 1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes--Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5--that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts," anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother). The Ministry of Truth is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Great Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history.

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life in this edition. “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.

George Orwell's story told in full, with a light touch and copious illustrations