A Clergyman's Daughter (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.
About the Author
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there. At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded. Homage to Catalonia is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote Coming Up for Air. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. As literary editor of the Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later for the Manchester Evening News. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame.
George Orwell died in London in January 1950. A few days before, Desmond MacCarthy had sent him a message of greeting in which he wrote: ‘You have made an indelible mark on English literature . . . you are among the few memorable writers of your generation.’
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
AS THE alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some complex, troubling dream, awoke with a start and lay on her back looking into the darkness in extreme exhaustion. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
AS THE alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some complex, troubling dream, awoke with a start and lay on her back looking into the darkness in extreme exhaustion. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fine book, but it suffers as it is judged against Orwell's amazing canon of classic novels that have stood the test of time. Where it remains valid today is in the sense of futileness. It is in a sense an existential examination of what life is all about. Why do we struggle? Why to we make an effort and why bother? The horrified reaction of the parents when they find their girls have been taught English from Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' is because of their realisation that one of the final plot-twists in the classic text requires understanding of what a Caesarean-section involves. They prefer ignorance to understanding. Orwell again identifies yet another issue that plagues modern society, in that we prefer to judge learning at school by league tables, rather than understanding.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Despite its bad press (even Orwell himself didn't like it), 'A Clergyman's Daughter' is well worth a read.
If it was by a lesser author it would probably have a much stronger reputation than it does. As it is, yes it definitely is the weakest of his novels, but as an evocative panorama of life below-the-breadline in depression-era England it is fantastic. A lot of the scenarios (hop-picking in Kent; homeless in Trafalgar Square) will be familiar to anyone who's read Orwell's diaries or some of his essays, but alongside the unforgettable school-teaching scenes and the brilliant descriptions of life in a small, petty, curtain-twitching village, the book as whole is as good as any account I've read of what it was like to be on the fringes of society and struggling for money in the early '30s.
The general criticisms of the novel are all entirely valid. Dorothy's amnesia is never properly explained; the hop-picking scenes are too descriptive and close to Orwell's reportage diaries of his time doing this; and the 'experimental' scenes around Trafalgar Square get rather annoying and skippable after the first couple of pages; BUT, if you go into the novel, as I did, prepared for these things, then they really don't matter, and didn't mar my enjoyment of it as a whole. What was good was VERY good, enough so to make up for the weaknesses. In particular I think the chapter of the book in which Dorothy becomes a school-teacher ranks up there with anything Orwell wrote, especially in his characterisation of the detestable Mrs Creevy and the way he describes the gradual disintegration of Dorothy's initial enthusiasm and promise.
I tend to be very nostalgic and sentimental about inter-war England (the beautiful monochrome photos of Bill Brandt, the booze-soaked melancholy of Patrick Hamilton....), but novels like this one, alongside 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and 'Coming Up For Air', are reminders of just how grim life was for probably the vast majority of people at this time. I would actually recommend considering these three novels as a sort of Orwellian '30s triptych, and think that read in order of publication (Daughter; Aspidistra; Air) they will each work best both as novels and as unforgettable historical documents. The looming threat of the Second World War is almost pysically tangible as they go on, a shadow crossing the landscape of these books, getting darker and heavier right the way through...
So don't be wary about trying this one. I was put off for ages because of its reputation, but am glad I eventually took the plunge. If you're interested in Orwell, or in the '30s generally, it is a must-read.
If it was by a lesser author it would probably have a much stronger reputation than it does. As it is, yes it definitely is the weakest of his novels, but as an evocative panorama of life below-the-breadline in depression-era England it is fantastic. A lot of the scenarios (hop-picking in Kent; homeless in Trafalgar Square) will be familiar to anyone who's read Orwell's diaries or some of his essays, but alongside the unforgettable school-teaching scenes and the brilliant descriptions of life in a small, petty, curtain-twitching village, the book as whole is as good as any account I've read of what it was like to be on the fringes of society and struggling for money in the early '30s.
The general criticisms of the novel are all entirely valid. Dorothy's amnesia is never properly explained; the hop-picking scenes are too descriptive and close to Orwell's reportage diaries of his time doing this; and the 'experimental' scenes around Trafalgar Square get rather annoying and skippable after the first couple of pages; BUT, if you go into the novel, as I did, prepared for these things, then they really don't matter, and didn't mar my enjoyment of it as a whole. What was good was VERY good, enough so to make up for the weaknesses. In particular I think the chapter of the book in which Dorothy becomes a school-teacher ranks up there with anything Orwell wrote, especially in his characterisation of the detestable Mrs Creevy and the way he describes the gradual disintegration of Dorothy's initial enthusiasm and promise.
I tend to be very nostalgic and sentimental about inter-war England (the beautiful monochrome photos of Bill Brandt, the booze-soaked melancholy of Patrick Hamilton....), but novels like this one, alongside 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and 'Coming Up For Air', are reminders of just how grim life was for probably the vast majority of people at this time. I would actually recommend considering these three novels as a sort of Orwellian '30s triptych, and think that read in order of publication (Daughter; Aspidistra; Air) they will each work best both as novels and as unforgettable historical documents. The looming threat of the Second World War is almost pysically tangible as they go on, a shadow crossing the landscape of these books, getting darker and heavier right the way through...
So don't be wary about trying this one. I was put off for ages because of its reputation, but am glad I eventually took the plunge. If you're interested in Orwell, or in the '30s generally, it is a must-read.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
George Orwell was a great English writer whose reputation has suffered from the tendency in English culture to regard the novel (and the poem) as the supreme test of a writer's worth. Orwell was clearly at his most stimulated and inspired as a writer when he had something urgent to say, but having something urgent to say is not always the best attitude to have when you are trying to write a novel. It certainly wasn't the best attitude for Orwell to have when he wrote this one, considering that when he wrote it he was really beginning to find his vocation as a political writer and that he was also (at the time) impressed and intimidated by the example of Joyce's 'Ulysses', which he'd just read. 'Ulysses' has a political dimension, but it is the work of a very different kind of writer. The result is a fascinating and disjointed mish-mash of a novel, and Orwell knew it; even while he was writing it, he was writing to friends to say that he was making a mess of it.
In spite of this, any fan of Orwell will have a soft spot for 'A Clergyman's Daughter', if only because it's this writer's most conspicuous failure. Some of it, the depiction of the heroine's awful and cramped life as the daughter of a snobbish and mean-minded clergyman, plus the vivid accounts of hop-picking and teaching in a cheap and nasty school, are unforgettable. Against that, you have to cope with the fairly implausible story (why and how does Dorothy lose her memory?), the shallow characterisation and the fairly woeful 'experimental' chapter in which Dorothy attempts to spend a night among the homeless in Trafalgar Square, the whole thing rendered as a clunky pastiche of a chapter in 'Ulysses'.
Orwell tried to digest his own personal experiences into fictional form, and in this case he failed. But it's an honourable failure; the book may not hang together as a fully realised work of art, but not many novels of the period were able to back up their mood of societal disillusionment with such excruciating and convincing detail. If you have never read Orwell, don't start here; try the essays, '1984' and 'Animal Farm', the finest products of his moral and political imagination. If you have read them already, this is a fascinating sidetrack. Orwell was right to think the book not good, but I for one am glad that his wish that it not be reprinted after his death has been disregarded. Dodgy as it is, it's still very interesting.
In spite of this, any fan of Orwell will have a soft spot for 'A Clergyman's Daughter', if only because it's this writer's most conspicuous failure. Some of it, the depiction of the heroine's awful and cramped life as the daughter of a snobbish and mean-minded clergyman, plus the vivid accounts of hop-picking and teaching in a cheap and nasty school, are unforgettable. Against that, you have to cope with the fairly implausible story (why and how does Dorothy lose her memory?), the shallow characterisation and the fairly woeful 'experimental' chapter in which Dorothy attempts to spend a night among the homeless in Trafalgar Square, the whole thing rendered as a clunky pastiche of a chapter in 'Ulysses'.
Orwell tried to digest his own personal experiences into fictional form, and in this case he failed. But it's an honourable failure; the book may not hang together as a fully realised work of art, but not many novels of the period were able to back up their mood of societal disillusionment with such excruciating and convincing detail. If you have never read Orwell, don't start here; try the essays, '1984' and 'Animal Farm', the finest products of his moral and political imagination. If you have read them already, this is a fascinating sidetrack. Orwell was right to think the book not good, but I for one am glad that his wish that it not be reprinted after his death has been disregarded. Dodgy as it is, it's still very interesting.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
No safety net in the thirties
A thoroughly engrossing read about the downtrodden daughter of a selfish 1930's clergyman who spends her days acting as unpaid curate and housekeeper, visiting parishioners and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Clive A. H. Still
At least it's Orwell...
The 'Note on the Text' for this edition tells us that Orwell regarded his second novel as a 'silly potboiler', but goes on to remind us he was similarly disparaging in describing... Read more
Published 6 months ago by John Moseley
One of Orwell's best, most underrated
I can see why this book wasn't highly rated. It doesn't involve any interesting or extraordianry character, it doesn't have sad ending (which one half expect from Orwell's book)... Read more
Published 6 months ago by LEA
Not exactly Orwell at his finest
I read this book some years ago, and what really sticks in my mind is a general feeling of "meh".
There's nothing wrong with the book as such, it's just not the... Read more
There's nothing wrong with the book as such, it's just not the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by I like reviewing things, sometimes
Dorothy- a microcosmic impression of the bleak 1930s
Upon first glance at this book I cannot admit to being instantly enticed. Indeed, it took me until at least the second real section to become absorbed, but when I did, I simply... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Vickie
Christianity isn't really an incurable disease
In the second sentence of this engaging novel, the narrator describes an alarm clock as continuing "its nagging, feminine clamour". Read more
Published 23 months ago by Sphex
Unexpected gem
A very funny, heartwarming, sad novel about the tribulations of the title character. This has much to say about the mores and attitudes of 1930s small town life. Brilliant stuff
Published on 18 May 2010 by John Hopper
Social commentary - what Orwell does best!
Written in 1935, two years after the non-fiction "Down and Out in Paris and London", the story draws from personal experience and is obviously the result of meticulous... Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2010 by J. Sutton
good
I wouldn't recommend it if your not already an Orwell fan,its a little slow and nothing much happens. Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2009 by A. Clarke
THE CLERGYMANS DAUGHTER
I WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED BY THIS BOOK.IT STARTS OFF AT A FAIRLY SLOW PACE BUT STARTS TO GET INTERESTING IN CHAPTER TWO.IT IS WRITTEN IN A TRADITION STYLE AND IS READABLE. Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2009 by Anne- WestDidsbury bookclub
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