Such, Such Were The Joys

"Such, Such Were the Joys" is a long autobiographical essay by the English writer George Orwell. It was probably composed in the early 1940s, but it was first published by the Partisan Review in 1952, two years after Orwell's death. In the piece, Orwell describes his experiences between the ages of eight and thirteen, in the years before and during World War I, while a pupil at a preparatory school: St Cyprian's, in the seaside town of Eastbourne, in Sussex. The essay offers various reflections on the contradictions of the Edwardian middle and upper class world-view, on the psychology of children, and on the experience of oppression and class conflict. The veracity of the stories it contains about life at St. Cyprian's has been challenged by a number of commentors, including Orwell's contemporaries at the school and biographers, but its powerful writing and haunting observations have made it one of Orwell's most commonly anthologized essays.