Orwell, Politics, and Power

Abstract

This is a book about George Orwell’s political thought it is not another book about George Orwell. I take the distinctive political writings within Orwell’s literary corpus as a source of inspiration for theorizing about contemporary political issues and themes. I have not attempted to offer yet another biography of Orwell nor is this yet another literary critique of Orwell’s writings or an evaluation of his prose reflections upon the political and social conditions of his day. These works, needless to say, have already been written. What follows differs from the multitude of previous studies of Orwell by taking him seriously as a political thinker and deriving a “political message” (of sorts) from his works that qualifies (or so it is argued) as a timeless contribution to the political thought of the liberal tradition.