Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Meyers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

This, the first biography to draw on a close study of the new "Complete Works", sheds a new light on this extraordinary literary figure through interviews with family and friends, and research into material in the Orwell archive. It also includes previously unpublished photographs. A child of the waning British empire, Orwell came to reject the class system and through his writing forged a new social consciousness that continues to engage modern intellectual thought. Meyers reveals the human failings of this creative visionary and offers a dark - but nuanced - portrait of the legendary figure.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It was a fellow English writer, V.S. Pritchett, who called George Orwell (1903-50) "the wintry conscience of a generation," and wintry is certainly an appropriate adjective for Jeffrey Meyers's somber portrait. It's not that veteran biographer Meyers doesn't admire the author of Animal Farm and 1984; he rightly sees Orwell as one of the 20th century's most penetrating critics of totalitarianism and most passionate advocates for a more humane society. He also notes that this combative polemicist could be "kind and gentle in his personal relations." But there's no way to make the chronicle of Orwell's life into a cheerful story. Born Eric Blair, he had an unhappy childhood, stifled by the conventions of a class system he grew to despise. Writing under the name George Orwell, he offended fellow socialists with his blunt criticisms of their failures in The Road to Wigan Pier, then, in Homage to Catalonia, infuriated communists by denouncing Stalinist persecutions of anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. His first wife died suddenly at age 39; his second married him on his deathbed. By the time 1984 made Orwell famous and wealthy in 1949, he knew the tuberculosis that had plagued him since childhood would soon kill him. As was the case in his books on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, and many others, Meyers's brisk narrative goes no deeper than the conventional wisdom about Orwell's writing, and his psychological assessments are similarly accurate but superficial. But for those just getting to know England's most scrupulous and influential political novelist, this no-frills biography makes a good introduction. --Wendy Smith

From Library Journal

Two major biographies sit on shelves dedicated to George Orwell (1903-50)DBernard Crick's Orwell: A Life (LJ 3/15/81) and Michael Shelden's Orwell: The Authorized Biography (LJ 10/1/91). Is another detailed look at Orwell really necessary? The answer is an unqualified yes. Meyers, a prolific biographer and critic, has contributed widely to the Orwell literature, and this is his first reassessment of the writer in 25 years. It is also the first important study to utilize the 20-volume The Complete Works of George Orwell (Secker & Warburg, 1998). With freshness, clarity, and compression, Meyers presents the now familiar saga of Orwell's difficult and ultimately tragic life, effectively interweaves excerpts from letters and interviews with Orwell's contemporaries (appending his account of difficulties with interviewees), and generously describes and critiques Orwell's writings, placing him firmly "in the English tradition of prophetic moralists." His writing about Orwell's persistent womanizing may surprise some readers, and his account of Orwell's activities during the Spanish Civil War is especially lucid. More readable and insightful than Crick's effort, though not as substantial as Shelden's, which is better suited to true Orwell aficionados, this will be welcomed by general readers and Orwell admirers. Highly recommended for all academic and public libraries.
-DThomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039304792X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393047929
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting if short Orwell biography, October 13, 2000

By 

Susan Paxton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (Hardcover)

Jeffrey Meyers' new biography of George Orwell, the brilliant British Socialist writer, is worth reading if short. Meyers does a more than adequate job of chronicling Orwell's varied and sometimes sad life, his personal relationships, and his books and major essays. An odd feature of the book is Meyers' meticulous description of photographs he doesn't include; several of the Orwell photographs he describes have never, to my knowledge, been reproduced elsewhere and might have been interesting in place of the often-reprinted shots featured in the book. It makes me wonder, in fact, if Meyers wanted to print more photographs and the publisher refused. All in all this is a decent, eminently readable biography and should prove a good introduction to Orwell's life. Orwell was, in my view, the finest essayist in the English language in the last century and probably within the last two centuries, and remains the conscience of his time and even of ours. In an age that prides itself on "I've got mine, to hell with you" (to paraphrase Sir Richard Rees, Orwell's friend, writing about Orwell), Orwell remains a staunch defender of a currently unpopular Socialist ideal that calls on all of us to care for one another and strive together to achieve for society what we selfishly and greedily grasp for ourselves now. Readers interested in knowing more about Orwell should also read Michael Shelden's "Orwell," which is more detailed and comprehensive (although it should be noted that Meyers includes some new information of his own) and Bernard Crick's "George Orwell: A Life" which some have discredited but which remains a incisive look at Orwell's works and his politics.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A true prophetic moralist..., April 18, 2002

By 

C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (Paperback)

Jeffrey Meyers is a biographer of some renown. An accomplished writer of criticism, his works focus mainly on literature, covering subjects from 'Homosexuality and Art' to studies on the mechanics of biography itself. He has published portraits of many literary figures - Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway, displaying an uncanny genius for research. ~Orwell - Wintry Conscience of a Generation~ is one of his more recent contributions that has given us a new and more down to earth portrayal of one of the most admired literary cult-figures in English letters. This book is not a hagiography, a monument-chiselling-excercise, creating more myth than fact: in this biography we are introduced to a human being, at times dark and disturbing, who received the calling to write somewhat late in life, and who showed a staunch integrity that today is quite rare.

Personally, reading Orwell is similar to sitting in the principal's office, being told in no uncertain terms the hard facts about the world, to then come away with a much firmer hold on reality. Orwell is a wake-up call, shattering any illusions you might have of a so-called just and fair society, revealing the numerous machinations of power under superficial propaganda that those in a position of influence want us to believe. While others were band wagoning, blowing any way the political and philosophical breeze was heading at the time, Orwell held fast to what he knew to be the truth - and eventually paid the price.

I found it interesting that Eric Blair (Orwell) suddenly dropped his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, (a truly detestable job for any man of conscience) to become a full time writer without having really written anything of significance. From the point of this 'calling', until his early death from tuberculosis at 47 years of age, wrote some of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, not to mention a myriad of essays, articles and reviews, which scholars, historians, and political scientists are pouring over to this day. Another interesting point - Orwell believed that if a writer produced anything less than 100,000 words a year, they were not doing their job. Anyone who writes professionally or other wise, knows this to be a daunting task.

At the beginning of Orwell's writing career, his actions showed considerable courage, a self-imposed guilt, believing that a rough, tramp-like existence was absolutely necessary: "...Every suspicion of self advancement, even to "succeed" in life to the extent of making a few hundreds a year, seemed to me spiritually ugly, a species of bullying...My mind turned immediately towards extreme cases, the social outcast: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes...what I wanted, at the time, was to find some way of getting out of the respectable world altogether." As Meyers simply explains, "Living rough and becoming a writer were part of the same route out of the respectable world." (p.79)

One of my favourite novels, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', describes this conscious escape from the privileged Victorian middle class into the dark recesses of working class poverty. Orwell is of that particular writing school where, in order to write about it, you have to live it - and he did so, plunging himself continually into personal and political conflict.

Jeffrey Meyers has done us all a big favour, giving us a gritty astonishing portrait of a man of letters, who fought for social justice, informing us through his actions and writing the importance of personal and political integrity - Orwell is a true prophetic moralist.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Straightforward Biography of Orwell, August 30, 2002

By 

Virgil "Virgil" (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (Paperback)

Jeffrey Meyers is the author of this clearly written biography of George Orwell (Eric Blair). The biography covers the whole of Orwell's life, including his socialist but anti-Stalinist left wing beliefs, time fighting for the Anarchist/Trotskyite POUM in the Spanish Civil War, lifelong battle over his health and his infatuation with various women as he grew older.

In our time Orwell has been claimed by the right wing (something that would have appalled him) yet Meyers shows his definite, though rocky, affiliation with Englands leftist movements which he kept to the end of his life. Another pervasive element is Orwell's constant money problem's finally resolved, ironiclly, when he was literally on his deathbed.

For clarity of writing this biography can't be criticized. It reads quickly because the style is so straightforward. Meyers, who's written several biographies, is certainly a master at his craft. I'd recommend this as a good read and overview of Orwell's literary and personal life. Good biography.