Nineteen Eighty-Four
Secker & Warburg, 1949.
First edition. Original green cloth with red lettering on the spine in the preferred maroon dustwrapper. A fine copy, with a touch of foxing to the page edges, in a very good dustwrapper indeed, uniformly faded to the spine as usual, but uncommonly crisp with just a touch of wear to the head of the spine. An unusually well preserved copy which, due to the thin consistency of the paper used for the jacket, is seldom now found without restoration or significant defects.
One of the major highlights and prophetic writings of the twentieth century. Orwell began writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1945, knowing that he would need to change publisher in order to see it in print. As he had found with Animal Farm, Orwell's novels were now opposed to Gollancz's political principles, and so it was the firm of Secker & Warburg (also the publishers of Animal Farm) who took on the book. The book was due to be finished in early 1948, though when the time came Orwell told his publishers
"It is just a ghastly mess as it stands, but the idea is so good that I could not possibly abandon it."
It was published in June 1949 and by October had sold over 22,000 copies. Such phrases as 'Double Think', 'Newspeak' and 'Big Brother' coined in the book have since become common parlance and the novel a cornerstone of dystopian literature.
Fenwick A12a; Connolly 99; Burgess p46
Stock ID: 43342
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