The good folks over at the Orwell Prize are doing a cool thing reminscent of that WWI letters blog I posted about a while ago. They’re reposting all of George Orwell’s diary entries in real time, exactly 70 years after Orwell first wrote them.
The August entries are from his domestic diaries. The political ones kick off on September 7th. I don’t know if that’s a convention Orwell himself used, or if it’s just how they classify them at the Orwell Prize.
So far the entries are relatively mundane stuff about the weather and George catching snakes, although I don’t mean that dismissively. It’s refreshingly genuine, and I’m glad George Orwell bucked the trend and didn’t kill snakes.
The footnotes are money, complete with Shakespeare quotes to explain a passing reference.
Posted part of your blog on Orwell, here at this forum.
http://www.allbeliefs.com/showthread.php?p=95010#post95010
Posted part of your comments on the URL that I have.
Whoops, meant this one! 😀
That’s great, Becky. Thank you for the link. :thanks:
I have comments set to go into a moderation queue if they contain links, by the way. It’s a handy final spam filter, but I know it’s quite confusing to find your comments aren’t posting. Sorry! :blush:
So this starts after he was fighting in Spain, but before WWII. Could be interesting to watch the development of his thought over the period.
It’s interesting to compare snake mercy to his account of a younger self in Shooting an Elephant. You can read that at george-orwell dot org.
I’m looking forward to reading his thoughts as Europe plunges into war. The real time aspect will keep me on pins and needles even though I know how it ends. 😉