{"id":23868,"date":"2014-01-21T11:22:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T16:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23868"},"modified":"2014-01-21T11:22:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T16:22:29","slug":"george-orwell-confessed-pamphlet-addict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/21\/george-orwell-confessed-pamphlet-addict\/","title":{"rendered":"George Orwell &#8211; confessed pamphlet addict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The British Library has posted an interesting short item on their <a href=\"http:\/\/britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk\/untoldlives\/2014\/01\/george-orwells-loft.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Untold lives<\/em><\/a> blog about George Orwell&#8217;s pamphlet collection:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>George Orwell\u2019s collection of mostly political ephemera was an important barometer of the social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, and a measure of his influences during those decades. While Orwell\u2019s personal papers went to University College London and the National Archives, his miscellaneous materials are held by the British Library. Totalling over 2700 items, a full inventory of Orwell\u2019s collection of pamphlets is now available via the British Library\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p>Orwell was not a writer of \u2018bestselling\u2019 books until the end of his life, after the Second World War. He became known as a journalist, a critic of other people\u2019s writings and a word-portraitist of the landscape of politics. It is likely he never passed up the opportunity to acquire pamphlets of any persuasion. He wryly observed in <em>The Tribune<\/em> that the pamphleteer\u2019s road was paved by a \u201ccomplete disregard for fairness or accuracy\u201d (8 December 1944). Perhaps the most appealing aspect of his pamphlets collection is that he wasn\u2019t Hoovering them up to form a George Orwell Archive; he considered them as a spectrum of thought that was deserving of preserving.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Orwell\u2019s heaps of pamphlets informed his writing, both fiction and non fiction. He took pride in his squirrelling-away of pamphlets, \u201cpolitical, religious and what-not\u201d. In 1949, he estimated that this hoard numbered 1200-2000, but even the higher figure was an underestimation. He wrote that \u201ca few of them must be great rarities\u201d and they were \u201cbound to be of historical interest in 50 years time.\u201d In line with most of his considerations, he wasn\u2019t wrong. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British Library has posted an interesting short item on their Untold lives blog about George Orwell&#8217;s pamphlet collection: George Orwell\u2019s collection of mostly political ephemera was an important barometer of the social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, and a measure of his influences during those decades. While Orwell\u2019s personal papers went to University [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,28,53],"tags":[86,354,269,134],"class_list":["post-23868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-media","category-politics","tag-criticism","tag-georgeorwell","tag-propaganda","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6cY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23869,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23868\/revisions\/23869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}