"It is an astonishing tribute to Orwell's gifts as a natural, unaffected writer that, although the historical events he is unfolding are all too bitterly familiar, the reader turns the page as though he did not know what was going to happen. Here, then, is a social, literary, and political history... which, while being intensely personal, never forgets its allegiance to objective truth." –The Economist
"These four volumes might be the perfect tonic for what ails our society."–America Magazine
"The nearest thing to Orwell's testament is sprawling rather than compact, the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters. Coedited by Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell, George Orwell's widow, it includes nearly all his nonfiction from 1920 to 1950....The set was first published fifty years ago and was reissued last year in a commendable act of literary citizenship by David R. Godine, Inc., a small, semi-legendary Boston publisher. The four volumes are a very rich harvest. All the great essays are here: 'Why I Write, ' 'My Country Right or Left, ' 'Looking Back on the Spanish War, ' 'Notes on Nationalism, ' 'The Prevention of Literature, ' 'Politics and the English Language, ' 'Writers and Leviathan, ' the essays on Dickens, Tolstoy, Kipling, Henry Miller, P. G. Wodehouse, and more."–Commonweal Magazine
"While Orwell is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, most of his writing derived from his tireless work as a journalist, and thanks to this welcome reissue of The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, which has been out of print for a decade, readers can find it all in one place. All of the author's insightful, hard-hitting essays and journalistic pieces are here...the most complete picture of the writer and man possible."–Kirkus Reviews
