George Orwell: A Life in Letters (42 page)

From November 1943 to February 1944 he wrote
Animal Farm
and after many difficulties, some posed by a
KGB
agent working in the Ministry of Information, it was published by Fredric Warburg on 17 August 1945, two days after VJ-Day. Then, in September, when he stayed in a fisherman’s cottage his love affair with Jura – his ‘Golden Country’ – began.

Dwight Macdonald wrote to Orwell on 22 October 1943 telling him he had resigned from
Partisan Review
. His letter of resignation, with, he said, ‘a rather hot reply from my ex-colleagues’, appeared in the July–August issue. He was starting a new journal and asked Orwell whether he had done any writing lately on ‘popular culture’ (Macdonald gives it quotations marks). He suggested something on British advertising since the war and also asked whether Orwell had ever written anything on the Spanish civil war.

To Dwight Macdonald*

11 December 1943

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Macdonald,

Many thanks for your letter dated October 22nd (only just arrived!) I hope your new magazine will be a success. I’d like to write something for it, but I think I can’t write anything of a strictly political nature while I have my arrangement with
P
[
artisan
]
R
[
eview
]. Apart from anything else, my periodical ‘London Letters’ so to speak use up anything I have to say about the current situation in this country. That article about the Spanish war that I spoke to you of I did finally write, but I sent it to
New Road
1943, edited by Alex Comfort and Co, who somewhat to my annoyance printed it in a mutilated form.
¹
Recently I did a short thing for a French magazine on the English detective story,
²
and it struck me that something interesting could be done on the change in ethical outlook in the crime story during the last 50 years or so. This subject is so vast that one can only attack corners of it, but how would you like an article on Raffles (‘The Amateur Cracksman’), comparing him with some modern crime story, eg. something from one of the pulp mags? (I could only do this in a rather sketchy way as one can’t buy the pulp mags in this country since the war, but I was a reader of them for years and know their moral atmosphere). Raffles, about contemporary with Sherlock Holmes, was a great favourite in England and I fancy in the USA too, as I remember he is mentioned in the O. Henry stories. And into the essay I could bring some mention of Edgar Wallace, who in my opinion is a significant writer and marks a sort of moral turning-point. Tell me whether you would like this, and if so, how many words about. I dare say I could turn the stuff in fairly soon after hearing from you, but how soon it would get to you I can’t say.
³
You see what the posts are like nowadays.

I have left the
BBC
after wasting 2 years in it, and have become editor
⁴
of the
Tribune
, a leftwing weekly I dare say you know. The job leaves me a little spare time, so I am at last getting on with a book again, not having written one for nearly 3 years.

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XVI, 2392, pp. 24–5; typewritten]

1
.
‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’; the headnote to which lists the cuts. (See XIII, 1421, pp. 497–511.)

2
.
‘Grandeur et décadence du roman policier anglais’,
Fontaine
, 17 November 1943 [XV, 2357, pp. 309–20].

3
.
Orwell wrote ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’, which appeared in
Horizon
, October 1944 (XVI, 2538, pp. 345–7); it was reprinted in Macdonald’s new journal,
Politics
, the following month with a slightly extended title: ‘The Ethics of the Detective story: from Raffles to Miss Blandish’.

4
.
Actually as literary editor.

To Leonard Moore*

9 January 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Moore,

Thanks for your letter. I think there might be the basis for a book of reprinted critical pieces when I have done one or two more which at present are only projected.
¹
I don’t think it is worth reprinting anything which has already been in print twice, but the other possible ones are:

Charles Dickens. (about 12,000?)

Wells, Hitler and the World State. (about 2
000).

Rudyard Kipling. (about 4000).

W. B. Yeats. (about 2000).

Gandhi in Mayfair. (about 3000).

The last 4 are all in
Horizon
. In addition, when I can get the books for it, I am
going to do for an American magazine an essay on ‘Raffles’, probably about 3–4000. I also did one of about 2000 on Sherlock Holmes for the Free French
²
magazine
Fontaine
. This I think could be put in but could do with some expansion. I would also like to put in an ‘imaginary conversation’ I did on the wireless with Jonathan Swift, and perhaps the substance of another talk I did on Gerrard° Manley Hopkins, if I can get hold of the script of the latter. In all this might make a book of about 30,000 words or more.

I can’t see to this now because I am overwhelmed with work. I am getting on with my book and unless I get ill or something hope to finish it by the end of March.
³
After that I have contracted to do one for the ‘Britain in Pictures’ series, but that shouldn’t take long.
⁴

This thing I am doing now will be very short, about 20,000 to 25,000 words. It is a fairy story but also a political allegory, and I think we may have some difficulties about finding a publisher. It won’t be any use trying it on Gollancz nor probably Warburg, but it might be worth dropping a hint elsewhere that I have a book coming along. I suppose you know which publishers have paper and which haven’t?

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVI, 2403, p. 59; typewritten]

1
.
The collection was published in England by Secker & Warburg on 14 February 1946 as
Critical Essays
, and in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, on 29 April 1946 as
Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture
.
Of the essays mentioned, ‘Gandhi in Mayfair’ and those on Sherlock Holmes, Swift, and Hopkins are not included; not mentioned here, but included are ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, ‘The Art of Donald McGill’, and those on Dali, Koestler, and P.G. Wodehouse.

2
.
Free French: those fighting with the Allies under General de Gaulle. Of some 100,000 French soldiers who were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk with about a quarter of a million British, some 10,000 joined de Gaulle and about 90,000 returned to France.

3
.
Animal Farm
.

4
.
The English People
, belatedly published, with unauthorised changes, by Collins in 1947.

To Gleb Struve*

17 February 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Struve,

Please forgive me for not writing earlier to thank you for the very kind gift of
25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature
with its still more kind inscription. I am afraid I know very little about Russian literature and I hope your book will fill up some of the many gaps in my knowledge. It has already roused my interest in Zamyatin’s
We
, which I had not heard of before. I am interested in that kind of book, and even keep making notes for one myself that may get written sooner or later.
¹
I wonder whether you can tell if there is an adequate translation of Blok?
²
I saw some translated fragments about ten years ago in
Life and Letters
, but whether they were any good as a translation I do not know.

I am writing a little squib which might amuse you when it comes out, but it is so not O.K. politically that I don’t feel certain in advance that anyone will publish it. Perhaps that gives you a hint of its subject.
³

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XVI, 2421, p. 99; typewritten]

1
.
This would become
Nineteen Eighty-Four
.

2
.
Alexander Blok (1880–1921), lyric poet much influenced by Symbolism. Although he welcomed the 1917 Revolution he quite quickly became disillusioned.

3
.
Animal Farm
.

To C. K. Ogden*

1 March 1944

Tribune

Dear Mr. Ogden

Very many thanks for the booklet. I was aware, of course, that you have much to put up with from the Esperanto people, and that that was why you drew attention to their very unfortunate choice for the verb ‘to be’ or whatever it is. We have had them on to us since mentioning Basic, but I have choked them off. Also the Ido
¹
people.

As I told you when I was in the B.B.C. (I have left there now) there was great resistance against doing anything over the air about Basic, at any rate for India. I rather gathered that its chief enemies were the writers of English textbooks, but that all Indians whose English is good are hostile to the idea, for obvious reasons. At any rate it was with great difficulty that I got Miss Lockhart on to the air.
²

I don’t know a great deal about G. M. Young.
³
He is the ordinary silly-clever ‘intelligent’ conservative whose habitual manoeuvre is to deal with any new idea by pointing out that it has been said before. The only time I met him he struck me as ordinarily snobbish, talking about the terrible sacrifices the upper classes had made on account of the war etc. He was also trying to chase our little Indian Section of the B.B.C. for broadcasting ‘unsound’ ideas. I think he was a supporter of appeasement. That’s about all I know about him.

Hope to see you some time.

Yours sincerely,

Geo. Orwell,

Literary Editor

[XVI, 2427, pp. 108–9; typewritten]

1
.
An artificial language based on Esperanto
.

2
.
Leonora Lockhart was an assistant to C.K. Ogden. Orwell arranged for her to speak to India on Basic English. Basic was developed in the 1920s and attempted to provide a readily learned ‘English’ based on a strictly limited number of words.

3
.
George Malcolm Young (
1882–1959), historian and essayist specialising in Victorian England. His
Charles I and Cromwell
was published in 1936, and he contributed
The Government of Britain
to the Britain in Pictures series in 1941.

To Roy Fuller*

7 March 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Fuller,

Since receiving your letter I have procured a copy of the
Little Reviews Anthology
¹
and read your story, ‘Fletcher’. I must say that I myself cannot see anything anti-semitic in it. I imagine that what Cedric Dover
²
meant was that the central character was a Jew and also a not very admirable character, and perhaps that counts as anti-semitism nowadays. I am sorry about this, but you will understand that as Literary Editor I cannot read all the books sent out for review and have to take the reviewers’ judgement for granted. Of course if he had made a bald-headed attack on you as an anti-semite I should have checked up on it before printing, but I think he only said ‘subtly anti-semitic’ or words to that effect.
³
I am sorry that you should have had this annoyance. I must add, however, that by my own experience it is almost impossible to mention Jews in print, either favourably or unfavourably, without getting into trouble.

Yours truly

Geo. Orwell