first edition
1946 · New York
by Orwell, George
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946. First American edition. Fine/Near Fine. First printing, with "first American edition" on the copyright page. In the first issue dust jacket with the price of $1.75. Publisher's black cloth. A clean, Fine copy in Near Fine dust jacket with just a bit of creasing to edges.
"The best fable in the English language" (Connolly). Orwell's satirical masterpiece, which has earned him his place in the canon alongside Defoe and Swift, was completed in 1944 and was rejected by four major publishers as "inappropriate" before being accepted and released by Secker & Warburg in 1945. It brought Orwell instant fame and a massive international readership; 250,000 copies were sold in the first year alone. It has, since then, survived as an example of how literature can translate complex ideas in simple and understandable terms. "Orwell believed passionately and politically that no meaningful idea was too difficult to be explained in simple terms to ordinary people" (Oxford DNB). It was like Orwell, then, to present such a work to a fellow writer who was similarly working to enlighten the English people about the political structures and debates surrounding them during and following wartime. Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. (Inventory #: 7315)
"The best fable in the English language" (Connolly). Orwell's satirical masterpiece, which has earned him his place in the canon alongside Defoe and Swift, was completed in 1944 and was rejected by four major publishers as "inappropriate" before being accepted and released by Secker & Warburg in 1945. It brought Orwell instant fame and a massive international readership; 250,000 copies were sold in the first year alone. It has, since then, survived as an example of how literature can translate complex ideas in simple and understandable terms. "Orwell believed passionately and politically that no meaningful idea was too difficult to be explained in simple terms to ordinary people" (Oxford DNB). It was like Orwell, then, to present such a work to a fellow writer who was similarly working to enlighten the English people about the political structures and debates surrounding them during and following wartime. Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. (Inventory #: 7315)
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