- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (7 Sep 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140182381
- ISBN-13: 978-0140182385
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.7 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 104,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin Modern Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A journey north in 1936, commissioned by the publisher Gollancz, produced Orwell's vivid and impassioned documentary of unemployment and proletarian life. This edition includes a new introduction by Julian Symons.
About the Author
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in London in 1950.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
60 of 63 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'The Road to Wigan Pier' is split into two parts. Part one is George Orwell's recording of his experiences in the North of England, meeting miner's families and reporting at first hand what he saw and heard. Orwell records with sincerity the working class condition. There is no blame or embellishment of what Orwell saw. Orwell's descriptions of the people in the boarding houses he was staying in, are wonderful. You really get a sense of the filth and depravation, and yet the people make you feel at home, to the point of marking your bread and butter with "a black thumb-print on it". I appreciate Orwell's candid writing. The stark reality of poverty is brought to life by Orwell, from his description of the conditions of working in the mines, to the weekly shopping bill and food consumption.
Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw and experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger and justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements and even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction and the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one.
In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time and a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us all that there are still destitute people in the world and that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.
Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw and experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger and justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements and even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction and the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one.
In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time and a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us all that there are still destitute people in the world and that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.
53 of 56 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
George Orwell, commissioned by the Left Book Club, tours the recession hit mining areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1936 and his report on the harsh social conditions he found there (the first part of this book) pulls no punches. No-one before or since has done reporterage like George Orwell and the vividness and directness of his prose with its underlying blazing committment to social justice strikes the reader, even at this remove of time. Orwell's descriptions, couched in his superb prose, will remain in your mind for ever and should be re-read by everyone as a reminder of just how harsh life was for many people, within living memory. Orwell is particularly good about the desperation, the struggle with respectability and the terrible psychological and social toll of unemployment and poverty.
The second part of the book charts Orwell's personal odyssey from public schoolboy and officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma to crusading Left-wing author and journalist. Along the way Orwell expounds his personal strategy for Socialism. Although dated, his insights are fascinating, describing as they do the origins of the class struggle ideas that infested and inflamed British politics right up to the 1990s. Orwell is bitingly caustic about many of his fellow Socialists, castigating the obsession with mechanical progress, the worship of Russia and the crank tendencies (still evident in the British Labour Party) - "...the dreary tribe of high-minded women...and the bearded fruit-juice drinkers that flock to the idea of 'progress' like bluebottles do to a dead cat". With incredible prescience Orwell identifies the factors that would eventually kill the traditional "Old" Labour Party - firstly - the dichotomy between the Labour voter in the street (who, by and large, wanted/wants a better standard of living from better working and living conditions), and the "orthodox" hierarchy and activists of the Labour Party (who, by and large, at least in theory wanted a complete change in society), secondly - the accretion on to socialist politics of a huge amount of crank ideas (Orwell's acerbic and caustic put-downs of crank thought forms some of the book's most memorable, and funniest, passages).
What Orwell cannot have forseen was that the second war, the moderate 1945 Labour government, the end of the British Empire, Baroness Thatcher and the rise of a knowledge, finance and service based economy would change the face of England permanently. But however dated the social and political conditions under which he wrote, George Orwell is always worth reading, always hard-hitting, always vivid and detailed, always committed and honest, often hilariously funny.
Read this book, read everything that George Orwell wrote.
64 of 68 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is divided into two sections. The first is a devastating account of the lives of coal miners in the north of England. While this account may be exaggerated it is completely conceivable that life in this time under such social and political conditions might have been like this. He goes to considerable length to explore the personal reactions and methods of endurance of the people he met. Orwell's dedication to exploring what life was really like for the coal miners was made at considerable personal discomfort and were as heroic as Jonathan Kozol's efforts in our present time.
The second half of the book is a long argument by Orwell of the negative aspects of socialism. He does this in order to provoke a serious discussion over how socialism can be implemented in our society. He understood well, as demonstrated in 1984, that many political parties use propaganda as a means of convincing the public that theirs is the right way. But, by taking the opposing view and criticising his own beliefs, he is able to bring the issues of the party into an open forum to consider implementations of change rather than party rhetoric. He does this most sincerely and in no way tries to hide the faults of the socialist political system of thought. In doing so he proves himself to be quite dignified in his system of beliefs. The juxtaposition of these two sections provides a striking idea of the immediate need for political reformation. He did not need to defend socialism because the need for a political change that could effect the lives of the lower class he investigated was obvious. This showed that Orwell's political ideas didn't exist on some ideological utopian plain, but were firmly rooted in the immense danger a political system could inflict upon a large population. It would be wise to remember this in reading the more popular 1984 and Animal Farm as well.
This book is compelling not just for people interested in politics, but also for anyone interested in history and the human condition. It is something you will be able to learn much from and provide you with inspiration.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Saying What He Thinks
This book comes to us in two parts, the first being a vivid description of working class reality in two locations in The North c. 1936. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Andy
boring orwell
for a book that is very highly rated as a classic - i found something where the writer just writes down his thoughts in a rambling way -- got very boring.
Published 1 month ago by avocet
Recalling memories
Having lived and worked in industrial Lancashire for thirty years from 1975 it was lovely to be recalled to sights and sounds, and places, that were fading memories. Read more
Published 1 month ago by David Bolton
Good present
Bought this for my fiancé as one of his Christmas presents and he really likes it. I will have to read it when he is done.
Published 4 months ago by KL
Brilliant
Published in 1937, George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier documents the grinding poverty of northern England, namely Lancashire and Yorkshire. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Troy Parfitt
Important read
My grandfather was down the pit at the age of thirteen so i read this book to understand what it was like for him , no wonder he moved down to london for work. Read more
Published 7 months ago by D. S. Sample
A road still worth walking
As the UK sits once again in the grip of a worldwide economic recession like the one that characterised the 1930s, I turned to Orwell's seminal text of that time - and found it... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Jeremy Bevan
grim
Starts well when describing the living conditions but then gets to be a grind, but at least you can say you've read it - it is a classic!
Published 14 months ago by Victoria E Courage
Classic? Classic rubbish
Having read 'The Ragged Trousered Philantropists' I though that 'The Road to Wigan Pier' - written nearly a generation after the Edwardian timing of the former - would be an... Read more
Published 18 months ago by M. Lilly
The Road to Wigan Pier
A very clearly written book, easy to understand even for someone not particularly politically minded. Read more
Published 18 months ago by DT
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