56 items, comprising three letters from Orwell (two TLS and a telegram), twenty two TLS, the contract for the book, two telegrams from Gollancz, twenty-eight carbons and a collection of secondary correspondence. Including: initial correspondence between Gollancz and Moore with the former worried that "I haven't heard from him since he went up north", and the latter mentioning the proposed title and suggesting it as a Left Book Club Choice; cover letter from Moore enclosing the original manuscript, asking that it be read soon as "Blair is planning to go to Spain"; Gollancz agrees to publish the book as a Left Book Club Choice, outside the terms of the three-book deal; Gollancz asks various people and organizations for photographs for the book; Rubinstein reads the book for libel; the original contract signed by Orwell for publication of the book; Moore complains to Gollancz that the News Chronicle has published significant portions of the book without paying royalties; typed letter from Orwell in Barcelona to Gollancz thanking him for writing the introduction to the book; correspondence concerning rights and Orwell's French translator; a long typed letter from Orwell to Gollancz denying accusations that he is a middle-class snob, asking Gollancz to intervene on his behalf, and threatening legal action against his detractors; various letters concerning rights to quote material from the book; later correspondence concerning the copyright in the photographs; correspondence with Sonia Orwell as the author's literary executor; letters of protest from Gollancz that Harcourts had reprinted Victor Gollancz's foreword without permission.

Orwell's classic study of industrial poverty in the north of England remains in print today, and is among the most esteemed and best-known of his non-fiction books.
After Orwell finished Keep the Aspidistra Flying in January 1936, Gollancz commissioned him to write a book about the condition of the working class and the unemployed in the north of England. Orwell spent the next few months in the region, writing a diary which formed the basis of the book, and worked on it for the rest of the year.
In December 1936 Orwell left England to fight in the Spanish Civil War and consequently the bulk of the pre-publication correspondence is left to his agent Leonard Moore. Moore and Gollancz therefore negotiated the terms of the publication, which was to include a large print run as part of the Left Book Club, with Orwell's wife Eileen Blair signing the publishing contract in his absence.
In spite of his small involvement pre-publication, the archive includes two long letters from Orwell to Gollancz. In the first of these Orwell is writing from the Hotel Continental in Barcelona thanking Gollancz for his introduction to the book and talking with some excitement about the situation in Spain, "I shall be going back to the front in probably a few days... I greatly hope I come out of this alive if only to write a book about it". Days later, on his return to the front, Orwell was shot in the neck by a sniper, but survived.
The second references the succession of attack pieces on Orwell in The Daily Worker, based on out-of-context quotations. Orwell presses Gollancz to seek to put an end to this by threatening libel action, which ultimately quelled the problem.

Stock ID: 39397