ORWELL, George, Critical Essays (Secker & Warburg, London), 1946 [first edition, first impression]

8vo; pp. 169, [1, ads].

Orwell’s wartime essays: very good copy in a good, unrestored, unclipped jacket. The collection covers a wide range of topics, including Dickens, Dali, Yeats, Kipling, Koestler, so-called 'boys' weeklies', and detective fiction.

Perhaps the two most significant essays are 'Wells, Hitler and the World State', and 'In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse'. In the former, Orwell criticizes Wells for his failure to engage seriously in realpolitik. In the latter, Orwell takes aim at the hypocrisy of those who continue to attack Wodehouse for is actions in 1940: "In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in 1940[…] If we really want to punish the people who weakened national morale at critical moments, there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing."

A very good copy, noting only some spotting to the page edges, and two very interesting contemporary reviews pasted in to the endpapers; dust-jacket in good condition, worn and with some faint spotting and darkening to the spine, but much better than is generally seen for this fragile postwar production.