Books and Novels
Orwell composed six novels: Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Most of these were semi-autobiographical. Burmese Days was inspired by his period working as an imperial policeman and is fictionalized; "A Clergyman's Daughter" follows a young woman who passes out from overwork and wakes up an amnesiac, forced to wander the countryside as she finds herself, eventually losing her belief in God, despite being the daughter of a clergyman
In addition to his fiction, Orwell also wrote a number of book-length non-fiction essays: Down and Out in Paris and London records his experiences tramping and teaching in those two cities; The Road to Wigan Pier is initially a study of poverty in the north of England, but ends with an extended biographical essay of Orwell's experiences with poverty; and Homage to Catalonia recounts his experiences volunteering to fight fascism in anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War with the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification.
- Down and Out in Paris and London (9 January 1933, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
- Burmese Days (October 1934, Harper & Brothers)
- A Clergyman's Daughter (11 March 1935, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
- Keep the Aspidistra Flying (20 April 1936, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
- The Road to Wigan Pier (February 1937, Left Book Club edition; 8 March 1937 Victor Gollancz Ltd edition for the general public)
- Homage to Catalonia (25 April 1938, Secker and Warburg)
- Coming Up for Air (12 June 1939, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
- Animal Farm (17 August 1945, Secker and Warburg)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four (8 June 1949, Secker and Warburg)
Read more about this topic: Books By George Orwell
Famous quotes containing the words books and, books and/or novels:
“In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
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“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know—Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel—the quality of philosophy.”
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