The Blair/Orwell Essay & Forum and The Online Review
May - July 2009
Published bi-monthly
The Blair/Orwell Essay was introduced in 2009 by the first article ever written by Richard Blair concerning the brief five years he had with his father, George Orwell, and by his subsequent upbringing by Orwell’s sister Avril, following his father’s death in January 1950. It is a poignant and revealing work and illustrates the depth of devotion Orwell had for this longed-for child of his later years. The Essay ran in this website until the 30th March and then joined our previous essays in the Archive where it will remain to be read and enjoyed for the foreseeable future.
In January 2008 the Blair/Orwell Essay & Forum was launched for responsible, informed discussion and debate about this great writer’s life and work. Essays written by distinguished academics, biographers and researchers are published bi-monthly. A debating forum, protected to give privacy from bloggers etc, has also been established and is beginning to prove nearly as interesting as the Essays.
Our Online Review Section is devoted to reviewing new works concerning George Orwell, and also new publications by those who write primarily about Orwell. The object of the exercise is to allow the satisfaction of instant response from readers through the protected membership of The Forum. The Online Review Section and the Forum are accessed from this Homepage. All of the 2008 essays are available for study in the Essay Archive.
Pay London a visit this summer to see ORWELL: a Celebration at the Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall from 8th June to the 4th July 2009.
The particular celebrations are the 60th anniversary of Nineteen Eighty Four, the 70th anniversary of Coming Up for Air, and the 75th anniversary of Burmese Days.
For further information email: david@doublethinktheatre.com
THE MAY/JULY ESSAY
by John Rodden with John Rossi
Professor Rodden has taught at the Universities of Virginia and Texas at Austin, USA and authored or edited several books on Orwell, including
- The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell (1989)
- Understanding ‘Animal Farm’ in Historical Content (1999)
- Scenes from an Afterlife: the Legacy of George Orwell (2003)
- George Orwell into the Twenty-First Century (2004)
- Every Intellectual’s Big Brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings (2006)
- The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell (2007)
John Rodden’s next book is tentatively titled The Unexamined Orwell. He is also under contract to Cambridge University Press to publish a new introduction to Orwell’s life and work in 20010.
Professor John Rossi teaches at LaSalle University in Philadelphia.
Essays by Sir Bernard Crick, Peter Davison, Gordon Bowker, Loraine Saunders, Douglas Kerr, DJ Taylor and Richard Blair may also be located for study in Essay Archive.
The Orwell Prize Awards for 2009 were held on the 22nd April. For details of the three prizes, see The Orwell Prize website.
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