Odd odds and ends

Listing page content here

Thin scrapings from the bottom of the Orwell archives, this volume; less than ten years after Peter Davison’s 20- volume complete Orwell, he has taken the opportunity to put some subsequent discoveries into print. The on dit is that the publishers of the complete edition declined the opportunity of presenting this supplement. Though this decision falls squarely into the ha’porth of tar category, and the complete Orwell must have been much more commercially successful than most comparable enterprises, it’s an understandable one. Orwell’s ephemeral writings fared unusually well in the 50 years after his death, thanks to two editors. First, his wife Sonia’s four-volume survey (‘It’s your plain duty,’ Ivy Compton-Burnett told her); secondly, Davison’s much more complete and thoroughly annotated collection. There may not be all that much left to find, and it’s a testament to our continuing fascination with a writer whose concerns might be thought essentially of their period that such a book is considered to be worth publishing by anyone.