Essays and other works
A selection of essays, articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell. Sketches For Burmese Days 1. John Flory – My Epitaph 2. Extract, Preliminary to Autobiography 3. Extract, the Autobiography of John Flory 4. An Incident in Rangoon 5. [...] Read more
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the [...] Read more
A Clergyman’s Daughter
The thing that had happened to her was commonplace enough – almost every week one reads in the newspapers of a similar case. A man disappears from home, is lost sight of for days or weeks, and presently fetches up [...] Read more
Burmese Days
As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgements is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much [...] Read more
Down and Out in Paris and London
These three weeks were squalid and uncomfortable, and evidently there was worse coming, for my rent would be due before long. Nevertheless, things were not a quarter as bad as I had expected. For, when you are approaching poverty, you [...] Read more
The Road to Wigan Pier
I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys [...] Read more
Homage to Catalonia
This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of a disaster such [...] Read more
Coming Up for Air
Say what you like – call it silly, childish, anything – but doesn’t it make you puke sometimes to see what they’re doing to England, with their bird-baths and their plaster gnomes, and their pixies and tin cans, where the [...] Read more
Animal Farm
‘Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, [...] Read more
Nineteen Eighty-Four
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘they threaten you with something – something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, “Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so.” And perhaps you [...] Read more