¹ The text is in Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 2:74–133.Google Scholar

² The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982)Google Scholar. All further references here will be to this edition, the introduction to which is very useful, if too brief, to situate the text more analytically.

³ This is on the whole true for: Hopkinson, Tom, George Orwell (London: Longmans, 1953), p. 28Google Scholar; Brander, Laurence, George Orwell (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1954), pp. 31–32, 149Google Scholar; Hollis, Christopher, A Study of George Orwell (London: Hollis and Carter, 1956)Google Scholar; Rees, Richard, George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1961), pp. 25, 53, 68Google Scholar; Oxley, B. T., George Orwell (London: Evans Bros., 1967), pp. 13, 58, 60, 62Google Scholar; Alldritt, Keith, The Making of George Orwell (London: Edward Arnold, 1969), pp. 135–40Google Scholar; Thomas, Edward, George Orwell (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), pp. 59–64Google Scholar; Voorhees, Richard, The Paradox of George Orwell (Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1971), pp. 104–105Google Scholar; Lief, Ruth Ann, Homage to Oceania: The Prophetic Vision of George Orwell (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Rees, Richard, “George Orwell,” in The Politics of Twentieth Century Novelists, ed. Panichas, G. (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1971), pp. 85–99Google Scholar; Zwerdling, Alex, Orwell and the Left (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Gross, Miriam, ed., The World of George Orwell (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971)Google Scholar; Williams, Raymond, ed., George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1974)Google Scholar; Meyer, Jeffrey, A Reader's Guide to George Orwell (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), pp. 56–59Google Scholar; Small, Christopher, The Road to Miniluv (London: Gollancz, 1975)Google Scholar; Lewis, Peter, The Road to 1984 (London: Heinemann, 1981), pp. 81–83Google Scholar; Fyvel, T. R., George Orwell: A Personal Memoir (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), pp. 111–15Google Scholar; Hammond, J. R.A George Orwell Companion (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 197–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Somewhat better are the accounts in Atkins, John, George Orwell (London: Calder and Boyar, 1954), pp. 323–42Google Scholar; Lutman, Stephan, “Orwell's Patriotism,” Journal of Contemporary History, 2 (1967), 149–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 196–205Google Scholar; Kubal, David, Outside the Whale: George Orwell's Art and Politics (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), pp. 29–35Google Scholar; and Crick, Bernard, George Orwell: A Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴ The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 7Google Scholar. Crick adds that “This has led to … great misunderstandings, both of his political position and of what he intended his two last great works to mean” (George Orwell, p. 403).Google Scholar

⁵ Alldritt, Keith, The Making of George Orwell, p. 136Google Scholar; Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit, p. 196Google Scholar. This is the standard view in most of the secondary literature.

⁶ See, e.g., Woodcock's comments in Meyers, Jeffrey, ed., George Orwell: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ See the “London Letter to Partisan Review” of December 1944, Collected Essays, 3:335–41.Google Scholar

⁸ Woodcock has been particularly critical of Orwell in this regard (The Crystal Spirit, pp. 196–205Google Scholar). For a more balanced view see Crick, Bernard, George Orwell, pp. 402–409Google Scholar, and the introduction to the Penguin text (pp. 7–30).

⁹ Collected Essays, 3:47.Google Scholar

¹⁰ On Orwell's “Tory anarchism” see Crick, Bernard, George Orwell, pp. 21–22Google Scholar, Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit, pp. 50–51Google Scholar, and Beadle, Gordon, “George Orwell and the Victorian Radical Tradition,” Albion, 7 (1975), 287–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Collected Essays, 1:301.Google Scholar

¹² Orwell, George, Homage to Catalonia (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 8–10.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., pp. 56, 62, 66. On the origins of Orwell's analysis of totalitarianism see in particular his review of Eugene Lyons's Assignment in Utopia, in Collected Essays, 1:369–71.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Orwell, George, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1937), pp. 19, 90–91, 99Google Scholar. See the comments by Spender, Stephen in Love-Hate Relations: A Study of Anglo-American Sensibilities (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974), pp. 198–200.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Crick, Bernard, George Orwell, p. 419.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Orwell, George, The Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 116–18.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 170–81.

¹⁸ On the meanings of totalitarianism see my “Der Begriff des ‘Totalitarismus’: Zur Realität des Grossen Binders,” Gulliver: Deutsch-Englische Jahrbücher, 14 (01 1984), 85–102.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For recent interpretations of Coming Up for Air see especially Meyers, Jeffrey, “Orwell's Apocalypse: Coming Up for Air” Modern Fiction Studies, 21 (1975), 69–80Google Scholar; Van Dellen, Robert J., “George Orwell's Coming Up for Air: The Politics of Powerlessness,” pp. 57–68Google Scholar; and Lee, Robert A., Orwell's Fiction (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), pp. 83–104.Google Scholar

²⁰ The Complete Novels of George Orwell (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 442–43.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., pp. 516–20. On this theme generally see Wain, John, “Orwell and the Intelligentsia,” Encounter, 31 (12 1968), 72–80.Google Scholar

²² The Complete Novels of George Orwell, p. 454.Google Scholar

²³ Collected Essays, 1:591Google Scholar. On the continuity between Orwell's youthful patriotism and this period see Crick, Bernard, George Orwell, pp. 21–22, 85–87.Google Scholar

²⁴ Collected Essays, 1:590–92, and generally, 587–92.Google Scholar

²⁵ Cited in Fyvel, T. R., George Orwell: A Personal Memoir, p. 107.Google Scholar

²⁶ Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit, pp. 241–42, 251.Google Scholar

²⁷ Thomas, Edward, Orwell, p. 63.Google Scholar

²⁸ See also Orwell, 's comments in “Patriots and Revolutionaries,” in The Betrayal of the Left, ed. Gollancz, V. (London: Gollancz, 1941), pp. 235, 238, 240–41Google Scholar. For subsequent views see in particular Lutman, Stephan, “Orwell's Patriotism,” 149–58Google Scholar. On Orwell's “erroneous” views on Spain, see Carr, Raymond, “Orwell and the Spanish Civil War,”Google Scholar in Gross, , The World of George Orwell, p. 72.Google Scholar

²⁹ Orwell, George, The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 220.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 44–45Google Scholar; and generally, “Fascism and Democracy,” in Gollancz, , The Betrayal of the Left, pp. 206–15, especially 214–15.Google Scholar

³¹ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 38–39Google Scholar. It is probably fair in this sense to say, as Keith Alldritt has done, that the proletariat embodied for Orwell the closest approximation to a “natural unified life” he was able to find (The Making of George Orwell, pp. 74–75).Google Scholar

³² The Complete Novels of George Orwell, p. 454.Google Scholar

³³ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 40–41Google Scholar. In a review of Jack Hilton's English Ways Orwell emphasized of prewar English working-class life that “it was a good civilisation while it lasted, and the people who grew up in it will carry some of their gentleness and decency into the iron ages that are coming” (cited in Thomas, Edward, Orwell, p. 57Google Scholar). See also Orwell's comments in “Culture and Democracy,” Victory or Vested Interests?, ed. Cole, G. D. H. (London: Gollancz, 1942), pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

³⁴ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 104, 112–13.Google Scholar

³⁵ Collected Essays, 3:51–52Google Scholar. There is very little secondary literature on this book, though some reviews are reprinted in Meyers, Jeffrey, ed., George Orwell: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 313–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ See, e.g., The Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 202–203.Google Scholar

³⁷ The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 113Google Scholar. See also “Patriots and Revolutionaries,” pp. 239–40.Google Scholar

³⁸ The Lion and the Unicorn, Introduction, p. 21.Google Scholar

³⁹ See the comments of Wood, Neal, Communism and the British Intellectuals (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 73Google Scholar. John Wain, however, has argued that Orwell was not so unfair to the intelligentsia, and recants his own earlier views on this question (“Orwell and the Intelligentsia,” 75–76).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 63–64Google Scholar. But in “Patriots and Revolutionaries” Orwell did argue of the middle class that their patriotism “when it comes to the pitch, is stronger than their sense of self-interest” (p. 235).

⁴¹ The Lion and the Unicorn, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

⁴² The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 218.Google Scholar

⁴³ As Carlyle King has done, “The Politics of George Orwell,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 26 (1956), 114.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Crick, Bernard, George Orwell, p. 468.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Meyers, Jeffrey, George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, p. 192Google Scholar. In part this impression can be gained from the fact that Orwell wrote that the aim of the book was “to reconcile patriotism with intelligence” (The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 30Google Scholar). Intelligence here is, however, intended in the general sense of The English Genius rather than in the more limited meaning of middle-class skills and education.

⁴⁶ The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 45.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See Spender's comments in Meyers, Jeffrey, ed., George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, pp. 315–16Google Scholar. See also Mander, John, “George Orwell's Politics,” Contemporary Review, 02 1960, p. 114.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Collected Essays, 3:335–41.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ On this aspect of the reception of Orwell's later works see especially Rossi, John, “America's View of George Orwell,” Review of Politics, 43 (1981), 572–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent example of the neoconservative interpretation see, e.g., Podhoretz, Norman, “If Orwell Were Alive Today,” Harper's, 01 1983, pp. 30–37.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Collected Essays, 4:564.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid., 3:22, 29.

⁵² Ibid., pp. 27, 47–48. Kubal, David, among others, has argued that The English People is more tentative on the question of socialismGoogle Scholar (Outside the Whale, p. 42).Google Scholar

⁵³ Collected Essays, 3:54.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid., 423–28, 370.

⁵⁵ On interpretations of Nineteen Eighty-Four see in particular Crick, Bernard's introduction to his edition of the text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Collected Essays, 3:412.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., 4:207–212.

⁵⁸ On Orwell and Burnham see Maddison, Michael, “1984: A Burnhamite Fantasy?” Political Quarterly, 32 (1961), 71–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 164–65.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Collected Essays, 4:213.Google Scholar

⁶¹ On this interpretation see Maddison, Michael, “1984: A Burnhamite Fantasy?” 78Google Scholar; Walsh, James, “George Orwell,” Marxist Quarterly, 3 (1956), 27Google Scholar; Ashe, Geoffrey, “Second Thoughts on 1984,” The Month, 11 1950, pp. 289–90.Google Scholar

⁶² For this view see Brander, Laurence, George Orwell, pp. 191–93Google Scholar; Rieff, Philip, “George Orwell and the Post-Liberal Imagination,” Kenyon Review 16 (1964), 67Google Scholar; Mander, John, “George Orwell's Politics,” 113–14Google Scholar; Kubal, David, Outside the Whale, p. 43Google Scholar; Thomas, Edward, Orwell, pp. 90–92Google Scholar; Harris, Harold, “Orwell's Essays and 1984,” Twentieth Century Literature, 4 (1958–1959), 159–60Google Scholar; Laurenson, Diana and Swingewood, Alan, The Sociology of Literature (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972), pp. 271–73Google Scholar. The view that Orwell left the whole matter deliberately ambiguous is put forward by (among others) Crick, Bernard, in his edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four (pp. 30–31).Google Scholar

⁶³ Collected Essays, 2:299.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid., 3:424.

⁶⁵ For the arguments against this view, see Lee, Robert A., Orwell's Fiction, p. 123.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Orwell, George, Animal Farm (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 15, 30, 66–7, 104–105, 75–76.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 175, 210Google Scholar; Crick, Bernard, ed., Nineteen Eighty-Four, p. 31.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 11, 55, 59–61Google Scholar. This primitive patriotism is of course also exercised in public “Hate” sessions.

⁶⁹ Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 60–1, 74–77Google Scholar; Collected Essays, 3:435Google Scholar. The separateness of the proles from the Party is in this sense essential to Orwell's whole argument.

⁷⁰ Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, p. 175Google Scholar. See Ashe, Geoffrey, “Second Thoughts on 1984”, pp. 289–90Google Scholar; Lief, Ruth Ann, Homage to Oceania, pp. 39–49Google Scholar; Thomas, Edward, George Orwell, pp. 90–92Google Scholar; Harris, Harold, “Orwell's Essays and 1984”, pp. 159–60.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Collected Essays, 4:214Google Scholar. Compare, however, ibid., p. 424. In Nineteen Eighty-Four the Party itself is corrupt in at least three ways: laxity of sexual morals, persistence of thoughtcrime, and the madness of those like O'Brien who suffer from delusions of grandeur.

⁷² Orwell's fears of a correlation between political despotism and the possession of nuclear weapons are expressed in the Collected Essays, 4:424.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ibid., 2:299.

⁷⁴ To have suggested that members of the intelligentsia might someday lead the proles would have made Orwell's hopes much more firmly evident in Nineteen Eighty-Four, if jeopardizing the moral complexity of its construction.