![]() ![]() ![]() He was a self-proclaimed socialist who seemed to take a special pleasure in assaulting his fellow leftists, a foe of nationalism who wrote movingly and beautifully about English patriotism, the English countryside and English customs like tea drinking and pubs. Those American intellectuals who knew his work were uneasy with him. First and foremost, he did not fit into any recognizable political category, right, left or center. Orwell's initial failure to reach an American audience had many causes. They were largely ignored, unread, and unreviewed. In the early 1930's Harper's had published some of his earlier works, novels like A Clergyman's Daughter and Burmese Days, and non-fiction pieces like Down and Out in Paris and London. He had written an occasional piece for journals like the New Republic, Dwight Macdonald's idiosyncratic Politics, plus a series of "London Letters" for Philip Rahv's radical magazine, Partisan Review. Outside of certain radical and literary circles Orwell was virtually unknown in America before 1946. ![]() It is now almost a third of a century since George Orwell's publication of Animal Farm made him famous in the United States. ![]()
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