Book Review: The Road to Wigan Pier

In 1936, British publisher, Victor Gollancz agreed to publish a book by Eric Arthur Blair on the imprint of the Left Book Club. Blair had been educated at Eton, but having failed to secure a University scholarship, had joined the British colonial service as a policeman in Burma. He came back to Europe as resolute opponent of colonialism and British snobbery. He was destitute and homeless for a period of time. He became a teacher, an assistant in a bookstore and a writer. His first full book, Down and Out in Paris and London, was published in 1933 under his pen name, George Orwell.

To write The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell visited the coal mining cities of the industrial north of England and lived with miners and their families in rooming houses and in their homes. The well-known first part of the book contains his description of work in the mines and life in the mining cities. It is careful, rigorous, first-person investigative journalism. (The Wikipedia entry on The Road to Wigan Pier has a good summary). Orwell had a keen eye for details. His prose style was clean. He describes the hard tough work of the coal mines, the dirty working conditions and the poor living conditions, making the point that many of the things held against the working class by the middle class - dirt, squalor - are not due to genetic or moral failings. The workers work hard, within a system that does not reward them equitably, and marginalizes their value as human beings.

The second part of the book is an essay about the British class system, industrialism, socialism and fascism. It reads well although Orwell repeats himself on some points. He wrote the book in about 12 weeks before going to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Although Orwell took a strong stance in favour of socialism, Gollancz wasn't comfortable with Orwell's ideas. He published the book as the Left Book Club selection in March 1937, having added a forward, which tried to distance the club from Orwell. His forward has been republished with the main work in print edition of The Complete Works of George Orwell. Orwell identified himself as a socialist for most of his career. The government thought he was a troublemaker. The conservative literary elites shunned him, and he had trouble getting his work published. The British Left didn't like him because he was a critic of Soviet Communism (Stalinism). He was at odds with the conventional thought of the Left for most of his writing career.

Article Author: Tony Dalmyn

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