Orwell and the Dispossessed

An expansive collection of George Orwell’s writing on the down and out

The vivid, impassioned writings collected together in this powerful volume chronicle Orwell’s first-hand experiences of life among the underclass of the ‘two nations’ of rich and poor.

Down and Out in Paris and London is the young Orwell’s memoir of his time as a struggling, often penniless writer, living among the destitute and dispossessed. Here he exposes a world unimaginable to most of his readers, one of vile doss-houses, hunger, squalor, and desperate poverty – of ‘going to the dogs’. There are also articles and letters on sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square, being arrested for drunkenness, on the poverty Orwell witnessed in Morocco and India, and his shocking essay, ‘How the Poor Die’.