Promotional Information

With such varied correspondents as T. S. Eliot, Stephen Spender and Anthony Powell, for nearly forty years George Orwell wrote and received the letters that are now collected together in A Life in Letters, edited with an introduction by Peter Davison in Penguin Modern Classics.

About the Author

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in London in 1950.

Peter Davison has published over one hundred volumes on drama, bibliographical and cultural studies, and George Orwell. He was appointed OBE in 1999 for services to Enlgish Literature, and in 2003 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Bibliographical Society.

Reviews

Arouses your warmest sympathy
*Daily Mail*

A Life in Letters contains nearly everything a reader new to Orwell needs to know about him
*New Statesman*

'Mr Davison's new edition of the letters is compelling...unlike a conventional biography, the character of the subject comes through undiluted.'
*Sunday Telegraph*

'This is the authentic Orwell voice: wonderfully clear and fresh and forthright'
*Mail on Sunday*

'the best single-volume selection we could hope for'
*Sunday Times*

'Orwell: A Life in Letters should take its place beside the five major biographies ... as an indepsensible resource for understanding George Orwell and his times.'
*John Rodden*