Books

First edition, first impression, in the scarce dust jacket; the first of only two essay collections published during Orwell's lifetime. Alongside the title essay discussing Henry Miller and the 20th-century literary landscape, the volume prints Orwell's studies of Charles Dickens and of boys' weeklies. Only the latter essay had previously appeared in print, and it is here expanded. Orwell described these essays as "semi-sociological literary criticism" and regretted that he could not find more frequent occasions to publish such pieces. The study on boys' weeklies, for example, "is really a critique of the whole range of ideas which a subtle propaganda machine 'inculcates' in a very large section of the population" (front flap). Inside the Whale and Other Essays was Orwell's first collected edition in any genre. It serves as a forerunner to the 1968 collected edition of Orwell's complete non-fiction, which enables readers "to see exactly how complex and varied a writer Orwell was compared to what we had concluded on the basis of the major novels alone" (Schlueter, p. 95). The first impression numbered 1,000 copies. The bibliographer Fenwick notes that several copies were destroyed in an air raid. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in yellow. With dust jacket. Splash marks to spine and lower edge of book block, foxing to outer leaves; jacket unclipped, spine damp-stained, encroaching upon lower edge of panels, spine and edges browned, a little nicked: a very good copy in like jacket. Fenwick A.8a. Paul Schlueter, "Trends in Orwell Criticism: 1968-1983", in College Literature, vol. 11, no. 1, 1984.

Inside the Whale and Other Essays is a book of essays written by George Orwell in 1940, including the eponymous essay 'Inside the Whale'.