The Road to Wigan Pier: Collins Classics

George Orwell, the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. He was educated at Eton and became a policeman in Burma. After leaving the police, he began to investigate the poverty in India and Europe which shaped his thinking about equality, money and power. His great works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are a product of his hatred of totalitarianism in all its forms and he was as critical of Stalin in the 1930s as he was ready to fight Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. His legacy of writing and political thought is much admired today. He died of tuberculosis in 1950.
Débora Tavares (Introduction) has a master’s degree in George Orwell’s 1984 and a PhD degree about Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying and The Road to Wigan Pier, both from the University of São Paulo. She researches and teaches connections between literature and society, as well as Orwell’s writings. She has published a postface for a Brazilian edition of 1984, together with video classes for 1984 and Animal Farm.

True genius ... all his anger and frustration found their first proper means of expression in Wigan Pier