According to biographer D. J. Taylor, the young Orwell displayed ‘an enthusiasm for poetry that in [his] formative years seems to have been as least as strong as any desire to write fiction’. Orwell’s poetry is not among his best known – or most highly praised – work, but nonetheless shares similar concerns to (and displays the dry sense of humour present in) his prose. Mere foothills in the range of Orwell’s work perhaps – but building up to the summits later scaled.
Contents:
Awake! Young men of England
The Italian soldier shook my hand
Kitchener
Romance
Sometimes in the middle autumn days
A Dressed Man
A Little Poem
The Pagan
The Lesser Evil
Ironic Poem about Prostitution
Summer-like for an instant
On a Ruined Farm near the His Master’s Voice Gramophone Factory
