Orwell and Empire

Douglas Kerr

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English

Oxford University Press
06 October 2022

Considers George Orwell's writing about the East, and the presence of the East in his writing.

George Orwell was born in India and served in the Imperial Police in Burma as a young man. Orwell and Empire is a study of his writing about the East and the East in his writing. It argues that empire was central to his cultural identity and that his experience of colonial life was a crucial factor, in ways that have not been recognized, in shaping the writer he became. Orwell and Empire is about all his writings, fictional and non-fictional. It pays particular attention to work that derives directly from his Burmese years including the well-known narratives 'A Hanging' and 'Shooting an Elephant' and his first novel Burmese Days. It goes on to explore the theme of empire throughout his work, through to Nineteen Eighty-Four and beyond, and charts the way his evolving views on class, race, gender, and authority were shaped by his experience in the East and the Anglo-Indian attitudes he had inherited. Orwell's socialism and his hatred of authoritarianism grew out of his anti-imperialism as The Road to Wigan Pier makes explicit. But this was not a straightforward repudiation or a painless process. He understood that, 'it is very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.' His whole career was a creative quarrel with himself and with his Anglo-Indian patrimony. In a way that anticipates current debates about the imperial legacy, he struggled to come to terms with his own history.

By: Douglas Kerr
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 384g
ISBN: 9780192864093
ISBN 10: 0192864092
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 06 October 2022
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1: Introduction: Anglo-India 2: Animals 3: Environment: Burmese Days 4: Class 5: Empire 6: Geography 7: Women 8: Race 9: Police 10: The Law 11: Literature Notes Bibliography

Douglas Kerr is Honorary Professor of English at University of Hong Kong and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. His first book was about the war poet Wilfred Owen and much of his later work studies English literature about the East in colonial and postcolonial times. His most recent book is Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession, and Practice (OUP, 2013) and he is general editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Conan Doyle.

Reviews for Orwell and Empire

"Kerr's insights on Orwell and Rudyard Kipling are particularly perceptive. No other writer was more important to Orwell: his whole life ""was a conversation, or quarrel, with Kipling"", quoting him frequently throughout his writings. While it is tempting to see the two writers as opposites, Kerr is keen to identify their similarities: ""Both of them were patriots though highly critical of their fellow-countrymen and frequently of their government. Both were public intellectuals who used their writing to raise political consciousness. Both loved animals and wrote books about them and both had a strong feeling for the English countryside"". * Richard Lance Keeble, English Studies * eminently readable, and a fascinating new look at Orwell's work * , Shiny New Books * Thoughtful and methodical, Orwell and Empire is a good guide to [Orwell's] complex and not always consistent imperial attitudes. * Professor Krishan Kumar, The Times Literary Supplement * [T]his is among the most enjoyable books on the subject of Orwell that I have discovered in a long time, and without doubt the finest work on Orwell's connection to empire and the east that it has been my privilege to read. * Ron Bateman, The Orwell Society *"