Down and Out in Paris and London

New Edition of Orwell’s vivid and groundbreaking memoir

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Exposing a previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time – and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.

Published in 1933, and still relevant today, Orwell’s first full-length work is a compassionate and insightful description of the life of the working poor in Paris and the homeless in London.

Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, he vividly documents a world of unrelenting squalor – sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a plongeur in a Paris hotel, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain.

Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time – and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.

'Orwell was the great moral force of his age' – Spectator

Contributor: Hugo Rifkind (Introduction by)

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