George Orwell
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, beginning Aug. 9, the diaries of George Orwell will run online, one entry a day, 70 years to the day after the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four wrote them. They will appear here. I love the idea of bringing a literary icon into the modern day libraries (or computers) of new readers. It is inspiring and shows the lasting power of literary greats.
The United Kingdom’s Orwell Prize, awarded for political writing, announced last week that the entries will appear daily in blog form on its website – until 2012, 70 years after the last entry.
The entries’ four-year span covers the descent of Europe into the Second World War and Orwell’s travels in Morocco following the injuries he sustained fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Readers can form their own impressions of the creator of Big Brother — whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair — from his observations on the outbreak of the war to his musings about how many eggs his chickens were laying.
“Orwell’s diaries are eyewitness accounts from the front lines of the 1930s: unemployment, gossip, fascism, communism — and chicken farming,” said Jean Seaton, chair of the Orwell Prize.
“All the issues – at home and abroad – are seen through the passionate/dispassionate eye of a great writer and a decent man.”
