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.

First edition, first printing. 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. A near fine set, the bindings square and firm, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with some spotting to the text block edge and margins of the prelims, are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the bright, clean dustwrappers, with uniform light fading of the spines, volume IV with a closed tear and associated creasing to the bottom edge of the front panel All volumes are unclipped and correctly priced (50s net) to front flap.

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).