Tea at Trianon: George Orwell's Writing Habits

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, September 17, 2023

George Orwell's Writing Habits

From Tony Riches at The Writing Desk:

Eric Arthur Blair, best known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist who wrote two of the most famous novels of the 20th century, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Educated at Eton, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then resigned in 1927 to become a full time writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of writing success forced him to take menial hotel work, which he described in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London'. (He chose the name George Orwell shortly before its publication, taking his surname from the River Orwell in East Anglia). His powerful dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has sold millions of copies worldwide and its terms such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" became part of everyday language. (Read more.)