George Orwell: A Life in Letters by Peter Davison Read Free Book Online

in magazines. Homage to Catalonia I think ought [to] be reprinted some time, but I don’t know whether the present is quite the moment. It is about the Spanish civil war, and people probably don’t want that dragged up now. On the other hand if Spain comes into the war I suppose it would be for a while possible to sell anything which seemed informative about Spanish internal affairs, if one could get it through the press in time.
    I shall be happy to give you any further information you want.
    Yours faithfully
    George Orwell
    [XV, 1942, pp. 18–19; typewritten]
    1 . In the light of Orwell’s later bitterness over the way Gollancz had ‘garbled’ Burmese Days (see II, p. 310), his comment that it was ‘slightly bowdlerised’ is surprising. The US edition sold better than Orwell remembered. It was, in fact, reprinted. The first printing was of 2,000 copies. A Penguin edition was published in May 1944.
    To Dwight Macdonald*
    26 May 1943
    10a Mortimer Crescent
    NW 6
    Dear Macdonald,
    Many thanks for your letter (dated April 13 and arrived yesterday!) and cheque. I enclose a list of 15 people who° I should think would be possible subscribers to P [ artisan ] R [ review ]. 1 Some of them I know are acquainted with the paper, and some may possibly be subscribers, but not to my knowledge. I am circularising all of them, telling them you can accept foreign subscriptions, and offering to lend copies so that they can have a look at it. Forster was interested when I showed him a copy some time back, so I am pretty certain he would subscribe if you prodded him, also Myers and Rees.
    I am glad the last letter was a success and I will send another as soon as possible. As you see by the above address I didn’t get the job I was trying for (in North Africa) and am still at the BBC . I enjoy very much doing these letters for PR , it is a tremendous relief every now and then to write what one really thinks about the current situation, and if I have occasionally shown signs of wanting to stop it is because I keep fearing that your readers will get tired of always hearing about affairs in England from the same person. My point of view isn’t the only one and as you will have seen from the various letters from Alex Comfort* etc. there are some pretty vigorous opponents of it. 2 But within my own framework I have tried to be truthful and I am very happy to go on with the arrangement so long as you are.
    We have shortly coming out a book made up from the broadcasts sent out to India by my department. 3 I think some copies will be sent to the USA , and I will try to get a copy to PR . Of course all books of broadcasts are crashingly dull, but it might interest you to see some specimens of British propaganda to India.
    I will send off my next letter probably in about a fortnight. In that case it should reach you before the end of July unless the mail service comes unstuck again.
    All the best.
    Geo. Orwell
    [XV, 2098A, p. xxiv; typewritten]
    1 . For the list of names, see XV, pp. xxiv–xxv.
    2 . In his ‘London Letter’, 1 January 1942 (XIII, 913, pp. 107–14), Orwell attacked Comfort* and others. (See its n. 4 and ‘Pacifism and War: A Controversy’, XIII, 1270, pp. 392–400.)
    3 . Talking to India , edited by Orwell, published 18 November 1943 (XV, 2359, pp. 320–1).
    To Alex Comfort*
    Sunday [11?] July 1943
    10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
    Dear Comfort,
    Very many thanks for sending me the copy of New Road . I am afraid I was rather rude to you in our Tribune set-to, 1 but you yourself weren’t altogether polite to certain people. I was only making a political and perhaps moral reply, and as a piece of verse your contribution was immensely better, a thing most of the people who spoke to me about it hadn’t noticed. I think no one noticed that your stanzas had the same rhyme going right the way through. There is no respect for virtuosity nowadays. You ought to write something longer in that genre, something like the ‘Vision of