THE COLLECTED ESSAYS, JOURNALISM AND LETTERS OF GEORGE ORWELL. Volume I: An Age Like This 1920-1940; Volume II: My Country Right Or Left 1940-1943; Volume III: As I Please 1943-1945; Volume IV: In Front Of Your Nose 1945-1950.

Second impression of the first edition. Four volumes. Publisher's original blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine, pale blue endpapers, in dustwrappers. Portrait and manuscript frontispieces to each volume. An excellent better than very good set, the bindings square and firm, with bumping and rubbing to the spine ends and corners, the cloth with a little dustiness, and a knock at the head of the spine of volume III. The contents are clean throughout and free from inscriptions or stamps. The top and fore-edge of the closed text block are a little spotted. Complete with the lightly rubbed, nicked and creased dustwrappers, which are ever so lightly (and uniformly) faded to the spine, volume III with some white marks to the rear panel. All volumes have been clipped and re-priced by the publisher (£4.00 net to the front flap), as issued. An attractive set.

This collected edition of Orwell's Essays, Journalism and Letters was compiled and edited by the author's widow and Ian Angus, librarian and one of the founders of the Orwell Archive. As Ian Hamilton wrote in his review, the editorial task was "huge", but "the only way of getting on [...] really close, conclusive terms" with the author. The result was, "[f]our bulging volumes of essays, book reviews, weekly columns, letters, broadcasts, all arranged and edited with considerable care. And one's first, awed, response is simply to the 'amount' Orwell wrote. How did he manage it?" ('New Society' 3 October, 1968; Fenwick D12)