Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

This remarkable volume collects, for the first time, essays representing more than four decades of scholarship by one of the world's leading authorities on George Orwell. In clear, energetic prose that exemplifies his indefatigable attention to Orwell's life work, Jeffrey Meyers analyzes the works and reception of one of the most widely read and admired twentieth-century authors. Orwell: Life and Art covers the novelist's painful childhood and presents accounts of his autobiographical writings from the beginning of his career through the Spanish Civil War. Meyers continues with analyses of Orwell's major works, including Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The massive critical literature on Orwell has not only become extremely specialized, and therefore somewhat inaccessible to the non-scholar, but it has also attributed to and even created misconceptions about the man, the writer and his literary legacy.

Literary forerunners of 1984 -- Utopias and other fiction -- Writings on totalitarianism.