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Critical Essays(Orwell)

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First edition (publ.Secker & Warburg)

Critical Essays(1946) is a collection of wartime pieces byGeorge Orwell.It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies ofpopular culture.It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books.

Contents

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First published inInside the Whale and Other Essays(1940).[1]
First published in an abridged form inHorizon,March 1940. Reprinted inInside the Whale and Other Essays(1940).[2]
Response to H. G. WellsGuide to the New World.
First published inHorizon,August 1941.[3]
First published inHorizon,February 1942.[4]
Response toA Choice of Kipling's Verse,edited byT. S. Eliot.
First published inHorizon,February 1942.[5]
Review ofV. K. Narayana MenonThe Development of William Butler Yeats.
First published inHorizon,January 1943.[6]
Response toThe Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.
According to a note by Orwell, "'Benefit of Clergy' made a sort of phantom appearance in theSaturday Bookfor 1944. The book was in print when its publishers,Messrs Hutchinson,decided that this essay must be suppressed on grounds of obscenity. It was accordingly cut out of each copy, though for technical reasons it was impossible to remove its title from the table of contents. "Several copies, including Orwell's own, escaped this excision.[7]
Unpublished beforeCritical Essays.[8]
First published inHorizon,October 1944.[9]
First published inWindmill,no. 2, [July] 1945.[10]

Publication

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In late 1944 Orwell, worrying about the ephemerality of magazine publication, began to collect a volume of his best essays.[11]The resulting collection appeared under the imprint ofSecker & Warburgon 14 February 1946, with a print-run of 3028 copies. The following May a second impression of 5632 copies was issued, with some small corrections.[12]The US edition of 5000 copies was published in April 1946 byReynal & Hitchcock,and retitledDickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture.A reprint in paperback dropped the subtitle.[13][14]

Themes

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Theblurbto the first edition described some of the essays as being "among the very few attempts that have been made in England to study popular art seriously". Orwell thought seemingly frivolous popular culture, such as crime fiction,comic postcards,and theBilly Bunterstories, to be worth studying for the light it throws on contemporary attitudes.[15]Applying this approach to the subjects considered inCritical Essayshe tended to find that they showed the innovations of his own time to be harsh and unfeeling compared to the old-fashioned humanity of traditional popular forms.[16] Another theme is that of literary style, which Orwell thought to be the inevitable result of its writer's world-view and the message he wanted to get across. He considered the English language of the 1940s to be in a degenerate state, and held that political discourse was inevitably corrupted as a result.[15][11]

Critical reception

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Orwell himself, writing before he had completedNineteen Eighty-Four,said that he thoughtCritical Essaysone of his three most important books, along withAnimal FarmandHomage to Catalonia.[11]His contemporaries in the world of criticism also largely saw the book's merits. The journalistTosco Fyvel,writing inTribune,acclaimed Orwell as "a national figure as a critic, satirist and political journalist", while disagreeing with Orwell's view that theAttlee governmentwas uncommitted to the introduction a fully socialist society.[17]In the Catholic paperThe Tablet,Evelyn Waughpredictably deplored Orwell's lack of religious feeling, but also wrote that the essays "represent at its best the new humanism of the common man", and that Orwell was "outstandingly the wisest" of the new critics.[18][19]Middleton Murry,who likewise criticised Orwell's secularism, nevertheless called Orwell andCyril Connollythe two most gifted critics of their generation.V. S. Pritchettconsidered the essays "brilliant examples of political anthropology applied to literature by a non-conforming mind".Eric Bentleysaw the book as "a dirge for nineteenth-century liberalism", and, likeIrving Howe,thought it represented Orwell at his best.[20]Edmund Wilson,a critic to whom most others compared Orwell, called him "the only contemporary master" of sociological criticism, praising him for his courage in rejecting the reigning orthodoxies, and for "a prose style that is both downright and disciplined".[21]A recent survey of Orwell's work endorses his own high opinion of its importance, calling it "Orwell at his best", a book which "showed Orwell's talent for finding deep meaning in otherwise trivial matters",[11]whileBernard Cricksaid that Orwell's essays "may well constitute his lasting claim to greatness as a writer".[15]

Footnotes

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  1. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 1, p. 504.
  2. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 1, p. 531.
  3. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol.2, p. 172.
  4. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 2, p. 195.
  5. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 2, p. 229.
  6. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 2, p. 317.
  7. ^Davison, Peter,ed. (1998).I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943–1944.The Complete Works of George Orwell. Volume 16. London: Secker & Warburg. p. 233.ISBN0436203707.Retrieved4 October2013.
  8. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 3, p. 282.
  9. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 3, p. 260.
  10. ^Orwell & Angus 1970,vol. 3, p. 403.
  11. ^abcdRodden & Rossi 2012,p. 70.
  12. ^Davison, Peter,ed. (1998).Smothered Under Journalism: 1946.The Complete Works of George Orwell. Volume 18. London: Secker & Warburg. pp. 104–105.ISBN043620374X.Retrieved4 October2013.
  13. ^"George Orwell: An Exhibition from the Collection of Daniel J. Leab Brown University, Fall 1997".John Hay Library: Collections.Brown University Library. 2001.Retrieved4 October2013.
  14. ^Davison, Peter (18 December 2012)."Dickens – first and last".The Orwell Society.Archivedfrom the original on 8 October 2013.Retrieved9 June2020.
  15. ^abcCrick 1994.
  16. ^Meyers 1997,p. 22.
  17. ^Rodden, John (2009) [1989].George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation.New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction. p. 307.ISBN978-0765808967.Retrieved6 October2012.
  18. ^Giraldi, William (11 August 2013)."Orwell: Sage of the Century".New Republic.Retrieved6 October2013.
  19. ^Greene, Donald(1990). "Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh –" Catholic novelists "".In Meyers, Jeffrey (ed.).Graham Greene: A Revaluation.London: Macmillan. p. 23.ISBN0333458958.Retrieved3 November2013.
  20. ^Meyers 1997,pp. 23, 220.
  21. ^Meyers, Jeffrey (2 September 2003).Edmund Wilson: A Biography.London: Constable (published 1995). pp. 272–273.ISBN0395689937.Retrieved3 November2013.

References

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