What will become of George Orwell’s archives?

The news that a vast cache of material by and concerning George Orwell is about to be cast to the four winds in the wake of a corporate sell-off has stirred predictable fury among Orwell buffs. As in all the best literary rows, the contending roles seemed to be clearly defined from the outset. There were the heroes (Orwell and his many acolytes); there was a principal villain – the publisher Hachette, which had decided to unload its archive, only to find that no single bidder could meet the asking price; there was the agent of their devilry (more about him in a moment); and even some subsidiary baddies, in the shape of a clutch of rare book dealers who are now hard at work flogging off the individual lots.

All this, by the way, takes place in an exceptionally high-end marketplace. A single handwritten, previously unpublished Orwell letter, of which a few are still thought to exist here and there, will probably set its purchaser back £10,000. As for the Hachette treasure trove ornamenting the dealers’ catalogues, the firm of Peter Harrington is offering the papers relating to Orwell’s second novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), for a cool £75,000. The file on his third, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), is marked at £50,000. The rival establishment of Jonkers is advertising a collection of The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) papers for a more modest £35,000. The file on Animal Farm (1945) has already gone for £100,000. That amounts to more than £250,000 for the contents of a not very large crate.

How has this happened? Here a little context is in order. Each of the four titles mentioned above was first published by the fine old firm of Victor Gollancz Ltd.