A Doubleplusgood Feast of Orwellian Delights

The latest, monster, 178-page, doubleplusgood issue of George Orwell Studies offers a feast of Orwellian delights. It is perhaps appropriate that two essays focus on Orwell and food – Mark Satta examines the relationship between food and thought in his writings while Richard Lance Keeble explores the surprisingly prominent representations of food (and lack of it) in the novels, essays and reportage.

Darcy Moore’s paper looks at the ‘two Erics in Burma’. Eric Frank Seeley (1902-1972) and Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950) first met at Eton College, then reconnected in Rangoon during the mid-1920s. Moore argues that a limited, problematic representation of Seeley and his ‘Indian lady’ in Orwell scholarship has resulted in significant contextual information being suppressed, overlooked or misunderstood. Keeping to the Burmese Days theme, Sarah Gibbs investigates the representation of reading habits and libraries in the novel.

G. Alexander Denning offers a new and controversial interpretation of O’Brien, Winston Smith’s torturer in Nineteen Eighty-Four, while Ameya Tripathi notes that Orwell took a camera to Spain and, although his camera and photographs were stolen, we have photographs in archives today which may have been taken by him, either as reproductions or sent to his wife Eileen before the theft. Tripathi goes on to consider how the simple fact of owning a camera and looking for photographs affected Orwell’s prose writing style.

Tim Crook reviews the extraordinary row which erupted between Orwell and his childhood hero H. G. Well while Orwell Society Trustee, L. J. Hurst lists some of the recent re-issues of Orwell’s works following the ending of copyright restrictions on 1 January. Richard Young provides an overview of his approach to acquiring original Orwell material to form a broad-ranging collection illustrating the writer’s life, Sylvia Topp responds to the review of her Eileen: The Making of George Orwell in the previous issue – and both Richard Lance Keeble and John Newsinger compose obituaries to Philip Bounds, author of a seminal study of Orwell and Marxism who died last year.

• George Orwell Studies, which is completely independent of The Orwell Society and jointly edited by Richard Lance Keeble and Tim Crook, can be purchased from the publishers Abramis, of Bury St Edmunds; Journals Fulfilment Department, Abramis Academic, ASK House, Northgate Avenue, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP32 6BB. Tel: +44(0)1284 700321; email: info@abramis.co.uk