A two page ALS, on a single sheet of plain writing paper, written from "The Cotswold Sanatorium, Cranham, Glos.", on his improving health, "If you happen to see Malcolm [Muggeridge], will you tell him please that it was awfully kind to suggest that Sanatorium in Kent but actually I had already arranged to come to this place... I am getting slightly better, at any rate I feel better... I imagine I shall be here for several months, then be at large for the summer...". On resuming writing, "I had to refuse some books the T.L.S. recently offered me. I am trying to do no work whatever for at least another month or two. My new book is supposed to be out in May or June, which doubtless means July. It is a Utopia written in the form of a novel, & I think the title will be "1984", though we haven't fixed that with complete firmness. Malcolm told me he too had finished a novel. How about you? It's a god-awful job getting back to writing books again after years of time-wasting, but I feel now I've broken the spell & could go on writing if I were well again." A little more on his new surroundings, "supposed to be a beauty spot... I live in a "chalet", which isn't quite as grim as it sounds..."

An exceptional letter to the novelist, Anthony Powell, discussing the publishing and title of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although only two years apart at Eton, Powell and Orwell did not meet until 1941, when they were introduced by mutual friend Cyril Connolly. Powell had read Down and Out in Paris and London and had been sufficiently impressed by Keep the Aspidistra Flying to write, on Connolly's encouragement, a "fan letter" and send a copy of his satirical Scottish poem, Caledonia. Orwell wrote a polite, even diffidently friendly response, but no further correspondence ensued until their meeting some five years later. Despite radically differing outlooks and political views, Orwell's friendship with Powell grew into one of the most substantial of his adult life. Powell and Malcolm Muggeridge were Orwell's closest literary friends during his illness at the end of his life, visiting and corresponding regularly and were the principal organisers of Orwell's funeral.
Having written the manuscript for Nineteen Eighty-Four over a two year period in the isle of Jura in the Hebrides, he was admitted to The Cotswold Sanatorium in early January 1949. Towards the end of the month he was visited by his publisher, Fred Warburg, where they agreed the futuristic title of Nineteen Eighty-Four would be better than the working title of The Last Man In Europe. Previous letters to Powell alluded slightly to writing a novel, most notably the trouble he was having in finishing it, "I've been mucking about with this book since June of 1947, and it's a ghastly mess now, a good idea ruined", however this is the first letter in which he outlines the style and title. Despite Orwell's optimism about his health improving, he was never to leave the Sanatorium and died less than a year later, shortly after the publication of his most famous novel, upon which much of his status as novelist and twentieth century visionary rests.

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