Researching and analysing the 20th century’s most influential author.
Professor Tim Crook is the joint editor of the George Orwell Studies Journal published by Abramis. He has been researching and writing about Orwell, his life, novels and journalism for many decades. This online resource contains illustrated versions of his academic publications and continuing original work in the area of George Orwell Studies. If you are visiting from a university anywhere in the world I would strongly advise you to persuade your library to subscribe to this journal. Personal UK, European and rest of the world annual subscriptions are available at £45, £50 and £55.
Abramis and Professor Tim Crook have agreed to make available Tim’s paper ‘Only Donkeys survive tyranny and Dictatorship: Was Benjamin George Orwell’s alter ego in Animal Farm? on Open Access and the pdf can be downloaded via the link embedded in the title.
George Orwell (1903-1950) died far too early from the advanced ravages of tuberculosis at University College Hospital in London but in an active and dramatic life of nearly 47 years he completed two highly influential novels for which he is most famous- Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). He also wrote other qualitative novels, a huge canon of political polemics, literary essays and regular journalism. His journalism sustained the novel writing because the fiction did not bring him enough income until the success of his last two books. It has been argued that his writings and observations on popular culture brought about the invention of the academic discipline of cultural studies.
Orwell has to be one of the most referenced and quoted authors of today in all forms of journalism and multimedia. Following the exhaustion of the copyright in his novels, some contemporary authors are even reinventing his works through the point of view of novel characters such as Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Polemics attacking his personal character are being published in hybrid fiction and non-fiction. He is as controversial now as he was in his lifetime.
Online multimedia features are under construction and in progress. The research and content is strictly copyrighted and all rights are reserved. No Artificial Intelligence whatsoever is involved in the creation and development of this work.
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This online project will include the introduction and annotation of Orwell’s novels which will also be available eventually through Kultura Press book publication.
The featured image for this page is of George Orwell’s statue in the courtyard of the BBC’s New Broadcasting House where he is depicted smoking a cigarette next to one of his most celebrated quotations: ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
Postings on George Orwell Studies in progress and under construction
New insights into George Orwell’s life and writings
The image above shows the dust wrapper of the first edition of Secker & Warburg’s publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 (By permission of the George Orwell Estate and UCL Special Collection). It would quickly become the dystopian projection in literature of the endpoint for life in totalitarian societies and drew on the lessons of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In this novel Orwell created the phenomenon of Newspeak – the oppressive control of thinking through language. Kultura Press George Orwell Studies will be providing resources on the analysis and significance of this work.