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Volume 1 of 4 covers the years to 1940 and is a fascinating view from the side-lines as Eric Blair makes his journey to become George Orwell. There are a lot of highly readable and relevant essays in this volume and the letters are very insightful, as we can see Orwell trying to gain a foothold on life as a writer and for several years he is producing essays and book reviews whilst working on his early books and either gaining experiences living amongst the poorest in society, or holding down jobs for income. At one point he asks T.S. Eliot (in his role at Faber & Faber) to consider him if he requires any French works to be translated into English. And along the way he meets his first wife, Eileen.
Really one shift occurs in 1936, by which time he has published Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep The Aspidistra Flying – all whilst working in schools or a bookshop. In 1936, however, he is without other employment and was commissioned to write The Road to Wigan Pier, and his research for that book was done under the name of Orwell the Writer, which is very different to his experiences of tramping when he pretended to be a tramp himself, including inventing false names, backstories and the addition of a Cockney accent. In Yorkshire and Lancashire he had no disguises, and from his correspondence there is a sense that he has made a transition from struggling writer to one who is confident that this is what he does and he will manage to support himself through his works.
His experiences of the Spanish Civil War are covered, ending in his wounding and recovery, his subsequent tubercular illness and recuperation spent in Morocco, before returning to England in 1939 and worrying about the impending war. In the two years between returning from Spain and the outbreak of WW2, Orwell published Homage to Catalonia and Coming Up for Air, which means that by the end of Volume One, he has published all three of his book-length works of non-fiction and four of his six novels.
There are quite a few book reviews included here, as he wrote many of these for different publications, and a lot of them are very interesting and certainly worth reading now. You can see the content of these reviews becoming more political as the years go by too, either through his choice of books and / or the nature of the reading world at that time.
There are a lot of terrific essays included in this first volume, concerning topics such as English poverty and conditions for the poor, his time in Burma, literary interests, the Spanish Civil War, British politics, empire, the prospect of war in Europe, fascism and a largely harmless but pointed essay on Boys’ Weeklies, which happily includes the indignant and self-righteous response from Frank Richards, writer of a couple of the long-running weeklies that Orwell takes a pop at. Also included are diary entries from his time researching Wigan Pier, his time in Spain and his time in Morocco.
By the end of the volume you get the feeling that Orwell has become much more the confident, assured writer that he wished to be in earlier years and he has found the purpose for which he sought so hard. This is well worth reading for anybody interested in Orwell as a writer and how he traversed through these years.
