A Bumper Orwellian Offering

Latest issue of George Orwell Studies

Volume 5,  Number 1

Darcy Moore delves deep into the archives to reveal the extent to which Orwell’s ancestors were engaged in the slave trade in the latest, bumper edition of George Orwell Studies, just out.

As Moore concludes: ‘It is probable Orwell knew more than his biographers ever uncovered about how deeply implicated his Scottish ancestors were in this immoral trade in human beings.’

Jaron Murphy explores Orwell’s attitudes towards the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. And Richard Lance Keeble’s paper suggests that George Orwell, throughout his career, maintained a fascination with advertisements that has been largely missed in the many studies of his life and writings. This focus on advertisements ties in particular with the political economy approach he adopts in his analyses of the operations and content of newspapers and magazines – and with his interests in propaganda and language.

Tim Crook analyses the writings of one of Orwell’s most ardent critics – Alaric Jacob, a fellow alumnus of St Cyprian’s preparatory school in Eastbourne. In particular, Crook examines in detail Jacob’s comments on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Ann Kronbergs, the author of a forthcoming collection of short stories, Each Herself, about the women in George Orwell’s life, explains how she came to write these stories, how she blended fact and fiction and how she was inspired by a range of sources and angles on these women’s lives.

John P. Lethbridge looks at the extraordinary life of Marthe Hanau and describes the facts behind Orwell’s brief reference to her in his celebrated essay ‘How the Poor Die’.

A year after German reunification, John Rodden led a class in Leipzig on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here he describes how a utopian inversion of the Two Minutes Hate suddenly erupted as the students loudly echoed in German the novel’s Newspeak slogans. ’It’s pandemonium – a momentary reminder of a fast-disappearing world of solidarity and hope and fun.’

And Gleb Zilberstein, Svetlana Zilberstein and Pier Giorgio Righetti outline their extraordinary research findings which reveal traces of TB in a letter Orwell sent to USSR on 2 July 1937.

In addition, the issue carries a film review by Benedict Cooper, book reviews by Kristin Bluemel, Martin Tyrell and Tim Crook; and a radio review by Norman Bissell.

• George Orwell Studies, jointly edited by Richard Lance Keeble and Tim Crook, and completely independent of The Orwell Society, can be purchased at http://www.abramis.co.uk/george-orwell-studies/subs.htm.