ID: 2691
Down and Out in Paris and London
ORWELL, George
Category: First Edition
Place/Publisher/Date:
London, Secker and Warburg. 1938.
Description:
First edition. 8vo; original cloth, spine lettered in gilt, The first part is an account of living in near-extreme poverty and destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. The second part is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from the tramp's perspective, with descriptions of the types of hostel accommodation available and some of the characters to be found living on the margin. In a 1971 The Richard Mayne wrote that the book was typical of something that was true of a great deal of Orwell's writing: his "relish at revealing behind-the-scenes squalor. He was always taking the lid off things—poverty, parlour Socialism, life in a coal mine, prep-school tyranny, the Empire, the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution, the political misuse of language." Very good, faint pencil marks to front free endpaper, original cloth, spine ends lightly bumped, light foxing to page edges and light ink marks to foot.
Price £3750.00
