The Road to Wigan PierVictor Gollancz personally commissioned Orwell to write about the distressed north of England in January 1936. After Orwell handed in his typescript a little before Christmas Day 1936, he immediately left to fight in Spain. Shortly afterwards the book was selected for publication by the Left Book Club. This meant a print run of 47, 340 copies instead of 2, 150, so bringing Orwell to a much wider audience. The first part of Orwell's account, Gollancz wrote in LEFT NEWS in April 1937, 'has done, perhaps in a greater degree than any previous book, what the [Left Book] Club is meant to do - it has provoked thought and discussion of the keenest kind'. All copies of the original Left Book Club and first public editions of THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER were sold. This edition reproduces the illustrations selected for that first edition, corrects the text and prints Victor Gollancz's Foreword as an Appendix. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accent Alf Smith attitude average bourgeois bourgeoisie Brookers civilisation coal dust coal-miner colliery common lodging-house Communist Corporation houses course D. H. Lawrence Daily Worker Davy lamp decent dirty dole dreadful edition England fact Fascism feel feet fight five George Orwell half happen Hence human hundred hundredweight instance keep kind of thing Labour Lancashire Left Book Club less literary live living-room lodgers London look machine mechanical progress mechanised Men Like Gods merely middle middle-class miner mines never night notice Orwell Orwell's perhaps person Peter Davison poverty probably proletarian realise remember Rent Road to Wigan round seemed shillings shillings a week slag-heaps slum smell snobbishness Socialism Socialist sort talk tion tramps travelling tripe ugly unemployed unemployment usually whole Wigan Pier working-class writers yards