First edition. Original green cloth with white lettering, in printed green and grey dustwrapper. A near fine copy, with "N.A." in purple ink to base of the title page, in a very good dustwrapper, which has a couple of short closed tears, a small wrinkle to the spine and a small gouge from the rear panel with no mentionable loss, but relatively little of the wear to either spine ends or joints which this title is prone. A comparatively well preserved copy of a book seldom found in presentable condition.

The author's masterpiece and one of the most skilful allegorical novels of the twentieth century, which the author said "was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."
It was a difficult book to get published. Victor Gollancz, to whom Orwell was contracted, turned down the book for political reasons; Nicholson & Watson rejected it too, citing "much the same reason as Gollancz"; T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber thought Orwell's was not "the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation"; William Collins thought the novel was too short; and most dramatically, Jonathan Cape was warned off publishing the novel by Peter Smollett of the Ministry Of Information, who was later revealed to be a Soviet spy.
The mounting rejections saw Orwell write to his agent Leonard Moore in April 1944, "I knew we should have a lot of trouble with this book". It eventually fell to Secker & Warburg to publish the novel, offering Orwell an advance of £100.
The book was Orwell's fifth novel, but his first commercial success:
"In the UK the book was the most widely talked-about publication of the immediately post-war era. Thanking Orwell for the gift of 'your ingenious and delightful allegory', Evelyn Waugh noted that 'It was, of course, one of the books I was seeking to buy, and, of course, finding it sold out everywhere. Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI, unable to find a copy in one of the West End stories, was forced to send her emissary to the anarchist bookshop run by Orwell's friend George Woodcock" (D. J. Taylor).

Stock ID: 44852