George Orwell - Life and Legacy

George Orwell: His Life and Legacy by Robert Colls is an intellectual biography which offers an original account of Orwell's life and work from his birth in the high noon of British imperialism in 1903, to his death on the eve of the Cold War in 1950.

List of contents

• Acknowledgements


• Preface


• Orwell in his own words


• 1: King's Scholar, Burma Sergeant, 1911-1927


• 2: Tramp Writer, 1928-1935


• 3: Down the pit and up again, 1936


• 4: Into Spain and out again, 1937


• 5: Man of the People, 1939-1945


• 6: Stepping Up and stepping out, 1941-1945


• 7: Husbandom


• 8: Famous Writer, 1949-1950


• 9: Legacy


• 10: The Point of being Orwell


• Notes


• Index

About the author

Robert Colls was professor of English History at the University of Leicester before joining the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, also in Leicester. He has written widely on modern British history, and for The New Statesman and the Literary Review, as well as for other newspapers and journals, and on television and radio including, most recently, The Rest is History podcast.

Product details

• Publisher: Oxford Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 21.01.2026
• EAN: 9780198830016
• ISBN: 978-0-19-883001-6
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Art, literature > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, Biography: literary, Literature & literary studies, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Biography: writers, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form