“The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews – 1,000 words is a bare minimum – to the few that seem to matter.” George Orwell, Confessions of a Book Reviewer
Orwell was a working journalist, essayist and book reviewer. His output was extraordinary by any measure. It is interesting to consider his opinion of the novels, poetry and non fiction he reviewed by reading the book too. It is also fascinating to consider the books Orwell read throughout his life, from his childhood, to his final years propped up in bed while hospitalised with tuberculosis.
Anand, Mulk Raj, Untouchable, London: Penguin, 1940 (first paperback edition)
Auden, W.H., Spain, Faber and Faber, 1937, 12pp. (pamphlet – all royalties went to Medical Aid for Spain)
Barzun, Jacques, We Who Teach, Victor Gollancz, 1946. 248pp. First Edition
Benney, Mark, The Truth About English Prisons, London: Fact, 1938
Benney, Mark, Low Company – Describing the Evolution of a Burglar, London: Peter Davies, 1938 (sixth impression in dust jacket)
Benney, Mark, Almost A Gentleman (uncorrected proof copy) London: Peter Davies, 1966. 342pp.
Beveridge, Lord, India Called Them, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1947. 418pp.
Boothby, Guy, Dr Nikola, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1896
Boothby, Guy, Bushigrams, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1897
Boothby, Guy, The Beautiful White Devil, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1897
Boothby, Guy, Across the World for a Wife, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1898
Boothby, Guy, Dr Nikola’s Experiment, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899
Boothby, Guy, Pharos of Egypt, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1899
Boothby, Guy, A Maker of Nations, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1900
Boothby, Guy, Prince of Swindlers, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1900
Boothby, Guy, The Woman of Death, London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., 1900
Boothby, Guy, My Indian Queen, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1901
Boothby, Guy, Farewell Nikola, London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd., 1901
Borkenau, Franz, The Spanish Cockpit: An Eyewitness Account of the Spanish Civil War, Faber and Faber, 1937. 303pp.
Borkenau, Franz, World Communism: A History of the Communist International, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962 [1938]. 442pp.
Burnham, James, The Managerial Revolution or What is Happening in the World Now, Putnam, London, 1942. First Edition with DJ.
Collis, Maurice, Trials in Burma, Faber & Faber, 2011. 224pp.
Collis Maurice (1953) Into Hidden Burma: an Autobiography, London: Faber and Faber (First Edition)
Constantine, Murray (Katharine Burdekin), Swastika Night, Left Book Club Edition, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1940.
Farrar, Frederic W., Eric, Or, Little By Little: A Tale of Roslyn School, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1894. (Orwell disliked the way others associated the book with his given name, “Eric”)
Gide, André, Back from the U.S.S.R., London: Secker & Warburg, 1937. 121pp. (First edition in DJ translated by Dorothy Bussy)
Gissing, George, New Grub Street, Oxford University Press, 2016. 528pp.
Goebbels, Josef, The Goebbels Diaries, London : Hamish Hamilton, 1948. 458pp. (translated and edited by Louis P. Lochner)
Goebbels, Josef The Goebbels Diaries: 1939-1941, London: Hamish Hamilton,1982 (translated and edited by Fred Taylor)
Hilton, Jack, Caliban Shrieks, London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1935. 166pp.
Hilton, Jack, Caliban Shrieks, Imprint: Vintage Digital, 2024. 208pp.
Horsley, Terence, The Odyssey of an Out-of-Work, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, 1931. 272pp. First edition
Huxley, Aldous, Limbo, London: Chatto & Windus, 1920. 292pp. First Edition
Huxley, Aldous, Mortal Coils, London: Chatto & Windus, 1922. 229pp. First Edition
Huxley, Aldous, Antic Hay, London: Chatto & Windus, 1923. 328pp. First Edition
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World, London: Chatto & Windus 1932. 303pp. First Edition
Huxley, Aldous, An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism, London: Chatto & Windus, 1937. 128pp. First Edition (See 414A in CWGO for interesting note)
Jacob, Alaric, Scenes From a Bourgeois Life, Secker & Warburg, 1949. 310pp. First Edition
Kipling, Rudyard, Out of India, New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1895 (First American edition)
Kipling, Rudyard; Eliot, T.S., A Choice of Kipling’s Verse made by T. S. Eliot with an essay on Rudyard Kipling, London: Faber and Faber, 1941. 306pp.
Langdon-Davies, John, Behind the Spanish Barricades, London: Clapton Press, 2022 (with a new prologue by Paul Preston)
Lean, E. Tangye, Voices in the Darkness: The Story of the European Radio War, Secker and Warburg, 1943. 243pp. First Edition
Lenglet du Fresnoy, Nicolas, Chronological Tablets exhibiting Every Remarkable Occurrence from the Creation of the World; with characteristic traits of each event, London Vernon & Hood, et al, 1801
London, Jack, The People of the Abyss, Nelson, 1903 (The author tramping in the East End inspired Orwell) Early reprint
London, Jack, The People of the Abyss – Illustrated Edition, The Workinghouse Press, 2013. 172pp.
Lyons, Eugene, Assignment in Utopia, George G. Harrap and Company Limited, 1937. First Edition
Miller, Henry, Tropic of Cancer, Paris: Obelisk, Feb. 1939 Fifth Printing
Miller, Henry, Black Spring, Paris: Obelisk, 1936. First Edition
Miller, Henry, Black Spring, Paris: Obelisk, Feb. 1938 Second Printing
Miller, Henry, Tropic of Cancer, Grove, 1961 First American Edition
Miller, Henry, Tropic of Capricorn, Grove, 1961 First American Edition
Miller, Henry, Black Spring, The Obelisk Press, 1963 First American Edition
Mirsky, Dimitri, The Intelligentsia of Great Britain, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935. 237pp.
Myers, L.H., The Root and the Flower/The Near and the Far, Secker & Warburg, 1984. 583pp.
Ogden, C. K., Hugon, P. D., & Lockhart, L. W., Basic English versus the Artificial Languages, Psyche Miniatures, General Series No. 78, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company Limited, 1935. 184pp.
Pitcairn, Frank (Claude Cockburn), Reporter in Spain, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1937 (signed second impression)
Pitter, Ruth, First Poems, London: Cecil Palmer, 1920 (First edition of the first published poetry of Orwell’s friend)
Pitter, Ruth, Persephone in Hades, Auch: Printed by A. Sauriac, 1931 (First edition, 100 copies only; privately printed; Orwell reviewed it in the Adelphi)
Pitter, Ruth, A Mad Lady’s Garland, The Cresset Press, 1934. 75pp. (First edition. Preface by Hilaire Belloc)
Pitter, Ruth, A Trophy of Arms: Poems 1926-1935, London: The Cresset Press, 1936. 91pp. (Signed first edition)
Pitter, Ruth, The Bridge: Poems 1939-1944, London: The Cresset Press, 1945. 60pp. (First edition. Preface by James Stephens)
Roberti, Jacques, Á la Belle de Nuit, Albin Michel, 1931. 384pp.
Roberti, Jacques (translated by Mary Ford), Houses of the Lost (Á la Belle de Nuit), London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1933
Roberti, Jacques (translated by Samuel Putnam), Without Sin (Á la Belle de Nuit), New York: Convci-Friede Publishers,1932
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap and Co, 1942. 150pp. First Edition
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap and Co, 1942. 150pp. First Edition
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap and Co, 1942. 150pp. First Edition (in torn dust jacket)
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap and Co, 1942. 150pp. First Edition (in torn dust jacket)
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap and Co, 1942. 150pp. First Edition (signed copy in good dust jacket)
Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography of an Opium Addict, Orchid Press, 2004. 152pp.
Rodker, John (ed) Soviet Anthology, London: Jonathan Cape, 1943. 231pp. (second edition)
Siegfried, André, England’s Crisis, London: Jonathan Cape, 1931. 256pp. (translated from the French by H. H. Hemming and Doris Hemming).
Sington, Derrick and Weidenfeld, Arthur, The Goebbels Experiment: A Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine, Yale University Press, 1943. 273pp.
Smith, Stevie, The Holiday, Chapman and Hall, 1949. (Orwell is satirised as Basil Tate) First Edition
Starkie, Enid, Baudelaire, Pelican Biographies, Great Britain, 1971, 720pp.
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels, London: Collins, 1952. 320pp. (with an introduction by Peter Quennell)
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 910pp.
Swift, Jonathan, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 686pp.
Swift, Jonathan, Irish Political Writings after 1725: A Modest Proposal and Other Works, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 658pp.
Swift, Jonathan, English Political Writings 1711–1714: ‘The Conduct of the Allies’ and Other Works, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 578pp.
Swift, Jonathan, Journal to Stella: Letters to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, 1710–1713, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 890pp.
Swift, Jonathan, Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises Polite Conversation, Directions to Servants and Other Works, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 913pp.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We, Vintage, (1920) 2007. 208pp. (with an introduction by Will Self)
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We, Canongate Books, 2021. 304pp. (with an introduction by Margaret Atwood and reviews by Orwell and Ursula Le Guin)
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We, Penguin Classics, 2021. 240pp. (with a foreword by Masha Gessen)
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