“DARE TO STAND ALONE”: FIRST EDITION OF SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY THE YEAR OF ORWELL’S DEATH

ORWELL, George. Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. London: Secker and Warburg, 1950. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of the first posthumous collection of Orwell’s essays, issued the same year as his death, featuring the title work, Shooting an Elephant, one of his most famous essays, along with A Hanging, Politics vs. Literature and 15 other key writings, most in book form for the first time.

“A kind of impassioned clarity governed the life and work of the great George Orwell, whose writings, as a critic once observed, are so fluidly presented, so unobtrusive, so transparent that you almost feel you could have tossed them off yourself… whenever you dig into Orwell you will hit a nugget of golden wisdom” (New York Times). This first edition of Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, published posthumously the same year as Orwell’s death, takes its title from arguably his most famous essay, Shooting an Elephant. “The maturing of Orwell’s political beliefs can really be dated from the five years (1922-27) he served as a policeman in Burma… In his best writing about Burma… the essays Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging, one can follow the development not only of Orwell’s disenchantment with Empire, but also his growing radicalism” (Cambridge Companion, 2). The essay Shooting an Elephant itself provides “a clear indication of the direction which Orwell’s thinking would take, towards becoming a ‘real rebel’ fighting an unjust system” (Lange in Bloom, George Orwell, 16). First edition, with 18 works by Orwell: most appearing in book form for the first time. In addition to Shooting an Elephant (1936, New Writing) and A Hanging (1931, Adelphi) are: How the Poor Die (1946, Now); Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947, Polemic); Politics vs. Literature (1946, Polemic); Politics and the English Language (1946, Horizon); Reflections on Gandhi (1949, Partisan Review); The Prevention of Literature (1946, Polemic), and Second Thoughts on James Burham (1946, Polemic). The section, “I Write as I Please,” features nine short pieces first printed in a weekly column in the Tribune: Confessions of a Book Reviewer (1946); Books v. Cigarettes (1946); Good Bad Books (1945); Nonsense Poetry (1945); Riding Down from Bangor (1946); The Sporting Spirit (1945); Decline of the English Murder (1946); Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946), and A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946). Fenwick D.3a.

Text fine, tiny bit of toning to edges and spine of cloth; slight edge-wear, mild toning to spine, faint soiling to rear panel of dust jacket. A near-fine copy.