Monday, August 18, 2008

Orwell the Blogger

Give a big welcome to a new blogger - a British author by the name of George Orwell who wrote, among much else, Animal Farm and 1984.

Well yes, I know that he actually died in 1950, but the clever folks who set up the Orwell Prize for political writing seem to have brought him back to life again by publishing his diaries online, at the rate of one blog post a day.

According to the BBC Tadio 4 website (where you can find podcasts of Orwell's son Richard Blair reading extracts) :
The diaries, written from 1938, cover the descent of Europe into war, as well as Orwell's travels in Morocco, following his sojourn in Catalonia, fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
But Orwell wrote about other issues beside politics :
... (he) was also interested in travel, food - and even slugs. ... he even includes newspaper clippings of sloe gin recipes.
Another famous dead author blog you might enjoy is that of the famous C17th diarist, Samuel Pepys, which I think is great enhanced by the use of hyperlinks to explain all the references. (This is, I think an example of digital literature working far better than the print version.)

These diaries seem to suit the medium so well that I have no doubts that if these guys were around today, both would have been happily blogging away!

5 comments:

Martin Bradley said...

Many thanks Sharon - this is what the internet is all about, brilliant!! Mmm I seem to be a little excited, sorry about that, will calm down in a moment. Must be a mid-crises life!

Martin Bradley said...

ps Eric Blair (George Orwell) took his name from the river Orwell in Suffolk not far from where I lived in Colchester, not sure about the George though. There's not a river George in Suffolk that I'm aware of.

bibliobibuli said...

glad this made you happy! didn't know about orwell taking his pen name from the river, so thanks.

Richard W. Symonds said...

This might be of interest :

http://gatwickcity.phpbb3now.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=631&start=0

bibliobibuli said...

thnaks yes. 1984 is a book we must read and reread ...