Alldritt, Keith. The Making of George Orwell. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1961.
* Traces Orwell's literary development from his rebellion against the
symbolist tradition to the creation of the "George Orwell" persona with
which to express his response to "social life." GO
Calder, Jenni. Chronicles of Conscience: A Study of George
Orwell and Arthur Koestler. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968.
* A comparative study of the whole body of work of both men, examining
the as prophets and revolutionaries; this is the first study to see Orwell
in a wider European perspective. PPF
* Calder concludes that their work will be relevant as long as authoritarian
governments continue to exist. AB
Carter, Michael. George Orwell and the Problem of Authentic
Existence. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985.
* Presents Orwell's novels as varying attempts to reconcile the individual
with society by means of a search for "authentic self." GO
Gross, Miriam, ed. The World of George Orwell. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.
* Excellently illustrated compendium of essays on various aspects of
Orwell's life and work. Particularly stimulating is D. A. N. Jones's "Arguments
Against Orwell," the devil's advocate's case. GO
* ...the best essays are by William Empson and Malcolm Muggeridge.
PPF
* Half the essays are autobiographical, half critical... AB
Hammond, J. R. A George Orwell Companion. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1982.
* Sensible, rather than profound, multipurpose book: accounts of Orwell's
life and achievement, individual studies, key to "characters and locations,"
short descriptive bibliography. GO
* An excellent introduction that combines brief reference material...with
longer analyses of Orwell's books. TK
Hollis, Christopher. A Study of George Orwell. London:
Hollis and Carter, 1956.
* This is a perceptive and stimulating study of Orwell's life and works
written from a Roman Catholic standpoint. The author was a contemporary
of Orwell's at Eton and is therefore able to write of his school days with
an intimate knowledge....has much to offer as a comprehensive portrait
of Orwell as man and writer. GOC
Hunter, Lynette. George Orwell: The Search for a Voice.
Stony Stratford, England: Open University Press, 1984.
* Examines Orwell's narrative voice in his major works. PPF
Lee, Robert. Orwell's Fiction. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1969.
* First study devoted to Orwell as a novelist, and particularly to
his management of symbols. GO
* Shifts the emphasis away from fictionalized autobiography and social
criticism to the books as fiction. Finds the major theme to be the failure
and corruption of language. PPF
Lief, Ruth Ann. Homage to Oceania: The Prophetic Vision of
George Orwell. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1969.
*Study of Orwell's political beliefs as evinced in his work, upholding
his humanism and belief in the ordinary man. PPF
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader's Guide to George Orwell. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1975.
* This is an excellently written and produced guide to Orwell's works,
tracing in chronological order the developments in his work and thought.
The author's approach is thorough and scholarly....Strongly recommended.
GOC
Meyers, Jeffrey, ed. George Orwell: The Critical Heritage.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.
* The 108 reviews in this book trace Orwell's critical and personal
reputation from Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) to the Collected
Essays, Journalism, and Letters (1968) and include translations from
Russian, Polish, German, and French. The long Introduction discusses the
controversy provoked by Orwell's books, the four phases of his career and
reputation, and the dominant themes of the criticism. AB
Modern Fiction Studies. Spring 1975: 1-136.
* A special issue on Orwell which includes essays by Martin Green on
Eton, Melvyn New on anti-Semitism, Richard Voorhees on recent criticism,
and Jeffrey Meyers, James Connors and others on the major novels. It also
contains a checklist of criticism. AB
Norris, Christopher, ed. Inside the Whale: Orwell: Views from
the Left. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1984.
* Generally hostile or "de-mythologizing" essays, concerned to highlight
the "right-wing recuperative reading" of Orwell's work and the elements
in it that make such a reading possible. GO
Oxley, B. T. George Orwell. London: Evans Brothers, 1967.
* This introductory study, which contains some interesting photos,
places Orwell's life in the context of the period, and focusses on Orwell
as journalist who responded to political events. Counting only Animal
Farm a literary success, Oxley places Orwell in the English documentary
tradition. He links Orwell's five novels through the protagonists, who
are all victims. AB
Patai, Daphne. The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
*Feminist study of Orwell, taking issue with his limited view of women,
and the cult of maleness that underlies his work. Written with clarity
and vigor, often yielding useful insights. GO
Rees, Richard. George Orwell: Fugitive From the Camp of Victory.
London: Secker & Warburg, 1961.
* An introductory study by one of Orwell's closest friends, who first
published Orwell's work in the Adelphi in 1930. Rees blends biography
and criticism throughout, as many critics tend to do. He separates Orwell's
character into four main aspects: the rebel, a serious and tragic pessimist;
the traditionalist, sympathetic to benign authority; the eighteenth-century
rationalist and master of the plain style; the romantic, lover of the past.
Rees ascribes his distinction as a writer to his sense of guilt and keenly
realistic conscience. AB
Small, Christopher. The Road to Miniluv: George Orwell, the
State, and God. London: V. Gollancz, 1975.
* Uncovers the underlying religious problem in Orwell's book, arguing
that Orwell's anguish comes from recognizing that "if God is a myth, socialised
humanity is just as much so." PPF
Thomas, Edward. Orwell. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1965.
* Sees Orwell's work as full of contradictions, since each book shows
him adopting a different persona and relationship to experience. GO
* Introductory survey suggesting that the Orwell we meet in the works
may be a consciously contrived literary persona. Orwell's chief theme is
a betrayal of the clerks and a capitulation to power. PPF
Voorhees, Richard. The Paradox of George Orwell. West Lafayette,
Ind.: Purdue University Studies, 1961.
* The first scholarly study not by an acquaintance, analyzing Orwell's
paradoxical attitudes to rebellion, power, and socialism. PPF
* ...still one of the best scholarly studies on Orwell, despite being
written before the publication of the Collected Essays, Journalism,
and Letters. PREF
West, Anthony. "George Orwell." Principles and Persuasions.
London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958. 150-159.
* West's essay is one of the most original and stimulating interpretations
of Orwell. He sees the seeds of 1984 in Keep the Aspidistra Flying
-- Orwell's mind is already warming to the idea of a universal smash-up
-- and relates the later novel to Orwell's autobiographical essay on his
sadistic prep school. West believes that the terrors of 1984 are
of an infantile character, and they clearly derive from the experience
described in "Such, Such Were the Joys." What Orwell did in 1984
was to send everybody in England to an enormous Crossgates to be as miserable
as he had been. West concludes his interpretation by suggesting that only
the existence of a hidden wound can account for such a remorseless pessimism.
AB
Williams, Raymond. George Orwell. London: Fontana/Collins,
1971.
* This is an admirably succinct introduction to Orwell and his works
which concentrates on the ideas and political beliefs underlying his writings....Though
some readers may find Williams's polemical approach too abrasive, this
study is essential to a full understanding of Orwell as an ideological
writer. GOC
* ...hints, rather than states, a dissatisfaction with Orwell's equivocal
socialism: he is part of a historical period, rather than a guide for the
future. GO
Williams, Raymond, ed. George Orwell : A Collection of Critical
Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
* A selection of essays which aims to represent three generations of
Criticism on Orwell: the early response to political controversy, the contemporary
critics who felt close to Orwell's example and approve of his attitudes,
and the younger generation who have gone back to interpret his work. Williams
reprints essays by himself, Terry Eagleton, Richard Hoggart, Lionel Trilling,
E. P. Thompson, John Wain, Stephen Greenblatt, Isaac Deutscher, Jenni Calder,
Conor Cruise O'Brien, and George Woodcock. AB
Woodcock, George. The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.
* ...now acknowledged to be the definitive critical work on Orwell....examines
his contribution as a man, a novelist, a patriot, and a stylist. The book
is especially valuable as a study of the diverse, even contradictory elements
which together made up Orwell's personality....The sections which summarise
the novels, non- fiction, and essays are notable for their clarity and
acute understanding, whilst the entire work is suffused with sympathetic
insight....indispensable as an appraisal of Orwell's strengths and weaknesses
and his unique place in twentieth-century literature. GOC
World Review. June 1950: 3-60.
* This special issue on Orwell, published shortly after his death,
contains selections from his unpublished Notebooks, biographical sketches
by Bertrand Russell and T. R. Fyvel, and essays on his major works by Malcolm
Muggeridge, John Beavan, Stephen Spender, Tom Hopkinson, Herbert Read and
Aldous Huxley. AB
Zwerdling, Alex. Orwell and the Left. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974.
* Though the title genuinely indicates the author's analysis of Orwell's
left-wing ideas, this study is equally concerned with Orwell's fictional
art, about which it is exceptionally perceptive, seeing Orwell's shortcomings
but recognizing their relationship to his concerns as a polemist. GO
* An excellent defense of the position that Orwell was "an internal
critic of socialism," not a defector from it. Presents Orwell as a diagnostician
of the Left's ills. PPF
Allen, Francis A. "Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Eclipse
of the Private World." Michigan Quarterly Review. 12 (1983).
* Argues that the individual's loss of privacy is the most frightening
aspect of Orwell's dystopia. PPF
Barnsley, John H. "The Last Man in Europe: A Comment on George
Orwell's 1984." Contemporary Review. 239 (1981).
* Quarrels with Orwell's pessimistic view of the proles and with his
view of technology as a means of repression. PPF
Barr, Alan. "The Paradise Behind 1984." English Miscellany.
19 (1968): 197-203.
* An attempt to show that in 1984 Orwell shows man ironically
seeking the opposite of the Judeo-Christian dream of paradise. Barr indicates
some religious parallels and allusions in the novel. AB
Beauchamp, Gorman. "Of Man's Last Disobedience: Zamyatin's We
and Orwell's 1984." Comparative Literature Studies. 10 (1973):
285-301.
* Identifies Adam in the religious myth as the ancestor of Orwell's
rebel. PPF
* In We and 1984 the conflict of the individual's rebellion
against the State reenacts the Christian myth of Adam's disobedience against
God by defying the godlike State and asserting man's instinctual freedom.
AB
Bolton, W. F. The Language of "1984": Orwell's Language and
Our Own. Oxford and London: Basil Blackwell and Andre Deutsch, 1984.
* Technical study, detailed but very readable, of Orwell's attitudes
to, and use of, English, relating these to how the English language has
actually developed since his death. GO
Burgess, Anthony. 1985. London: Hutchinson, 1978.
* In this detailed and brilliantly written critique of Nineteen
Eighty-Four the author challenges many of the intellectual assumptions
on which the novel is based. He demonstrates that the type of society postulated
by Orwell is inherently improbable and concludes that "As a projection
of a possible future, Orwell's vision has a purely fragmentary validity."
This is a stimulating and thought-provoking essay which should be widely
read. GOC
Calder, Jenni. Huxley and Orwell: "Brave New World" and "1984."
London: Edward Arnold, 1976.
* A comparative approach to the two outstanding dystopian novels of
our century. PPF
College Literature. 11.1 (1984).
* Issue devoted to studies of Nineteen Eighty-Four. PPF
Dooley, D. J. "The Freudian Critics of 1984." Triumph.
1 (1974): 34-39.
* Rejects the Freudian interpretation by insisting that Orwell's fears
are based on observed realities, not neurotic fantasies. PPF
Elsbree, Langdon. "The Structured Nightmare of 1984." Twentieth
Century Literature. 5 (1959): 135-41.
* A reading of 1984 as structured by dreams and reveries to create
a world in which there is no fixed reality. Elsbree analyzes each of the
three parts to show their consistent structure and describes two sets of
images: physical confinement and open spaces; darkness and blinding artificial
light. AB
Feder, Lillian. "Selfhood, Language and Reality: George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty- Four." Georgia Review. 37 (1983).
* Identifies the gravest threat of Oceania as the separation of language
from any real function. PPF
Fink, Howard. "Newspeak: The Epitome of Parody Techniques in 1984."
Critical Survey. 5 (1971): 155-63.
* Newspeak is an ironic parody of three sources: C. K. Ogden's Basic
English, Lancelot Hogben's Interglossa and F. A. von Hayek's
The Road to Serfdom. Fink traces Orwell's early interest in and
approval of Basic English, and his rejection of it in "Politics and the
English Language." He illustrates in some detail how Ogden and Hogben's
goal of reduction of vocabulary is parodied in Newspeak A, and how von
Hayek's chapter on Fascist propaganda techniques inspired Newspeak B. AB
Foley, Joseph and James Ayer. "Orwell in English and Newspeak:
A Computer Translation." College Composition and Communication.
17 (1966): 15-18.
* A computer translation of part of Orwell's "Why I Write" into Newspeak
reveals the corruption of meaning that characterized the official prose
style of Oceania. AB
Geering, R. G. "Darkness at Noon and 1984 -- A Comparative
Study." Australian Quarterly. 30 (1958): 90-96.
* Geering traces parallels between Orwell and Koestler's experience
of politics and their disillusionment with the possibilities of Communist
revolution. He shows how 1984 intensifies some of the ideas and
develops the characters of Darkness at Noon. Orwell differs from
Koestler in believing that revolution will occur in spite of corruption,
though he agrees with Koestler that all revolution is doomed to fail because
of man's lust for power. AB
Hamilton, Kenneth M. "G.K. Chesterton and George Orwell: A Contrast
in Prophecy." Dalhousie Review. 31 (1951): 198-205.
* Finds Nineteen Eighty-Four superior to The Napoleon of
Notting Hill because of its greater realism. PPF
Hollis, Christopher. "1984 and the Necessity of Doublethink."
Horizon. 20 (1949): 200-208.
* Hollis approaches 1984 through a criticism of the Marxist
principle that economic interest motivates man, and asserts that love of
power is a stronger force. He illustrates this idea from 1984, explains
how Doublethink is found in parliamentary government, and criticizes as
implausible Orwell's notion of controlled warfare. AB
Howe, Irving, ed. "1984" Revisited: Totalitarianism in Our
Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
* Argues that the book should be read as a mixture of genres: Menippean
satire, conventional novel, tract, romance. PPF
Hynes, Samuel. Twentieth Century Interpretations of "1984."
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
* A valuable collection of critical essays and reviews. Hynes finds
in Orwell a tension between the need for political action and the desire
for a private life. PPF
* The book contains essays by: V. S. Pritchett, Lionel Trilling, Isaac
Deutscher, Irving Howe, John Strachey, Stephen Spender, George Kateb, Alex
Zwerdling; brief extracts by Wyndham Lewis, A. L. Morton, and Herbert Read;
and a letter to Orwell by Aldous Huxley. AB
Jensen, Ejner J., ed. The Future of "Nineteen Eighty-Four."
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984.
* Contains new essays on Nineteen Eighty-Four, including one by Senator
Eugene McCarthy, and a penetrating study, "Orwell's Psychopolitics" by
Alex Zwerdling. GO
Maddison, Michael. "1984: A Burnhamite Fantasy?" Political
Quarterly. 32 (1961): 71-79.
* Interprets the book as a depiction of James Burnham's managerial
revolution and the growth of power elites. PPF
McDowell, Jennifer. "1984 and Soviet Reality." University
of California Graduate Journal. 1 (1962): 12-19.
* A useful essay which relates 1984 to published statements
about the USSR available to Orwell, and shows the extent to which the novel
was based on Soviet life. McDowell cites factual parallels in the Soviet
Union's social structure, police methods and legal system, its repression
of artists, its attitude to love and marriage, its use of propaganda to
enforce conformity, and its falsification of history and statistics. AB
McNamara, James and Dennis J. O'Keefe. "Waiting for 1984:
On Orwell and Evil." Encounter. 59 (1982).
* Regards the book as a moral treatise about the state of the world
after the destruction of capitalism. PPF
Meyers, Jeffrey. "The Evolution of 1984." English Miscellany.
23 (1972): 247-61.
* 1984 is a concrete and naturalistic portrayal of the present
and the past, and its great originality results more from a realistic synthesis
and rearrangement of familiar materials than from any prophetic or imaginary
speculations. The novel is not only a paradigm of the history of Europe
for the previous twenty years, but also a culmination of all the characteristic
beliefs and ideas expressed in Orwell's works from the Depression to the
Cold War. AB
Patai, Daphne. "Gamesmanship and Androcentrism in Orwell's 1984."
Publications of the Modern Language Association. 97 (1982).
* Examines the Party's pursuit of power for its own sake in terms of
games theory. PPF
Philmus, Robert. "The Language of Utopia." Studies in the Literary
Imagination. 6 (1973): 61-78.
* Houyhnmhnmland and Oceania provide contexts for testing the limiting
conditions of language as a function of political order. Both are hypothetical
models of societies in which language approaches the extreme of total assent,
where language can do no more than reflect, and thus guarantee, the nature
of the social order. AB
Ranald, Ralph. "George Orwell and the Mad World: The Anti-Universe
of 1984." South Atlantic Quarterly. 64 (1967): 544-53.
* 1984 is about a world where normal values are reversed and
communication takes place only through inflicting pain. Winston and O'Brien's
dialogue is an inverted Platonic dialogue and Winston's defeat is the reverse
of Socrates'. In emphasizing the failure of communication Orwell has much
in common with modern dramatists. AB
Reilly, Patrick. "Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Failure of
Humanism." Critical Quarterly. 24 (1982).
* Argues that the book discredits humanism as a valid creed for modern
times. PPF
Reilly, Patrick. "Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Insufficient
Self." The Literature of Guilt: From "Gulliver" to Golding. London:
Macmillan; Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1988.
* Shows the relationship of Nineteen Eighty-Four to Gulliver's
Travels, especially in a shared awareness of failure and corruption.
PPF
Smith, Marcus. "The Wall of Blackness: A Psychological Approach
to 1984." Modern Fiction Studies. 14 (1968-69): 423-33.
* An explication of Winston Smith's psychology. The author argues that
Winston's rebellion is unconscious and instinctive, and that his neurosis
about his mother becomes transferred to Big Brother. Thus the novel suggests
that human nature is rooted in the unconscious and is not changed or controlled
by the Party. AB
Sperber, Murray. "Gazing into the Glass Paperweight: The Structure
and Psychology of Orwell's 1984." Modern Fiction Studies.
26 (1980).
* Compares the book with Freud's studies of paranoia, focusing on Orwell's
overriding interest in exploring the world of human persecution. PPF
Stansky, Peter, ed. On "Nineteen Eighty-Four." New York
and San Francisco: W, H Freeman and Co., 1983.
* Essays on Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four, by scholars at Stanford
University, from a wide range of literary, political, and sociological
perspectives. GO
Steinhoff, William. George Orwell and the Origins of "1984."
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975.
* A valuable examination of Orwell's literary influences and attitude
toward intellectuals, and analysis of the early novels from the perspective
of 1984. A study of the personal experiences and intellectual context
of Orwell's last novel shows that his development as a writer coincided
with his growing knowledge and hatred of totalitarianism; and that 1984
is a culminating work which expresses, almost epitomizes, a lifetime's
ideas, attitudes, events and reading. AB
Voorhees, Richard. "1984: No Failure of Nerve." College
English. 18 (1956): 101-102.
* Voorhees points out the similarities between the world of 1984
and Coming Up for Air. Orwell's explicit reference to the early
decades of the twentieth century in the Appendix on "Newspeak" indicate
that 1984 is not a prophecy of doom, but an exaggeration of themes
Orwell had treated earlier in the novels and essays. AB
Wicker, Brian. "An Analysis of Newspeak." Blackfriars.
43 (1962): 272-85.
* Wicker argues, with examples from 1984, that Orwell was the
victim of a deep philosophical dissociation between the observer and the
world, language and thought, words and objects. ¤