Why I Write Paperback - 2005

Details

• Title Why I Write
• Author George Orwell
• Binding Paperback
• Edition [ Edition: first
• Pages 128
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Penguin Books, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
• Date 2005-09-06
• ISBN 9780143036357 / 0143036351
• Weight 0.2 lbs (0.09 kg)
• Dimensions 6.96 x 4.46 x 0.36 in (17.68 x 11.33 x 0.91 cm)
• Ages 18 to UP years
• Grade levels 13 - UP
• Themes
  • Chronological Period: 1900-1949
  • Cultural Region: British
• Library of Congress subjects Authorship, Orwell, George - Authorship
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2005047452
• Dewey Decimal Code 828.912

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious - i.e. seriously intended - writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.