Mark Twain has crashed the lofty gates of the Everyman library, but only with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, already fairly well known under the guise of ‘children’s books’ (which the...

It was a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling’s poetry1, but it was not to be avoided, becaus...

OH! give me the strength of the L… The wisdom of reynard the Fox And then I’ll hurl troops at the… And give them the hardest of knock… Oh! think of the War Lord’s maile…

Winston was gelatinous with fatigue. Gelatinous was the right word. It had come into his head spontaneously. His body seemed to have not only the weakness of a jelly, but its translucen...

A dressed man and a naked man Stood by the kip—house fire, Watching the sooty cooking—pots That bubble on the wire; And bidding tanners up and down,

Winston looked round the shabby little room above Mr Charrington’s shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The old-fashioned ...

Dickens is one of those writers who are well worth stealing. Even the burial of his body in Westminster Abbey was a species of theft, if you come to think of it. When Chesterton wrote h...

When he woke it was with the sensation of having slept for a long time, but a glance at the old-fashioned clock told him that it was only twenty– thirty. He lay dozing for a while; then...

He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if it was proper to speak of days. The white light and the humming sound were the same as ever, but the cell was a litt...

The chestnut tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens....

One striking fact about English literature during the present century is the extent to which it has been dominated by foreigners—for example, Conrad, Henry James, Shaw, Joyce, Ye...

Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might have been ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I dreamt—’ he began, and stopped shor...

You never walk far through any poor quarter in any big town without coming upon a small newsagent’s shop. The general appearance of these shops is always very much the same: a few p...