The world of the 21st century would have disgusted George Orwell.  He would have been appalled that we allow billions of people to live in poverty and squalor while a comparatively tiny number has inexcusable wealth and wields incalculable power. He would have been angry that inequality is now part of every society in every country, the largest and smallest, those at the top of the GDP league table and those at the bottom.  He would have said it directly: huge gaps between the richest and the poorest aren’t unfortunate consequences of an otherwise well-functioning system.  They are a fundamental part of that system, built in to its design and necessary to its operation. Orwell not only saw and understood the world clearly. He also described it clearly with a prose so precise, so brilliant, and so lucid that he has become an exemplar for anyone who wants to write well.

It has been many years, possibly decades, since I read any Orwell.  The faded paperback copy of The Road to Wigan Pier on my bookshelves was one I bought in 1977, but even at that great distance, and with much of its details forgotten, I can remember the effect the book first had on me. Re-reading it now, its power has grown with the passage of time.  The conditions Orwell  described in working class England in the 1930s (within my own parents’ lifetimes) were not significantly different from those that Engels and Mayhew saw in Victorian England.  That’s damning enough, but what really shocks and scandalizes is the realization that similar poverty persists today in the cities of the US and UK, not to mention in so many countries in the “developing” world.

The Road to Wigan Pier is divided into two connected essays. The first and most successful part is a brilliantly written account of the living and working conditions in English mining communities in the 1930s. The second part is a disquisition on socialism.  It’s interesting as a “period piece”, but is much less compelling and hasn’t aged well.

The popularity of Orwell’s novels, especially 1984 and Animal Farm, practically guarantees that successive generations discover his genius. I hope readers move beyond those stories and experience his extraordinary documentary non-fiction.