Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

London: Secker & Warburg, 1945. First edition. Near Fine/Very Good +. A Near Fine copy of the book, clean and unmarked with just a bit of toning at the spine ends. In a Very Good+ original dust jacket that shows minor wear at the spine ends, and few short creases to the lower front panel and a small chip from the lower rear panel. Laid in is a letter from Joy Batchelor, discussing T.H. White's work and the possibility of a new Gulliver's Travels film. Joy Batchelor (1914-1991) was an English animator, screenwriter, director and producer, who produced a 1954 animated version of Animal Farm.

"The best fable in the English language" (Connolly). (truncated) Orwell's satirical masterpiece, which has earned him his place in the canon alongside Defoe and Swift, was completed in 1944 and was rejected by four major publishers as "inappropriate" before being accepted and released by Secker & Warburg in 1945. It brought Orwell instant fame and a massive international readership; 250,000 copies were sold in the first year alone. It has, since then, survived as an example of how literature can translate complex ideas in simple and understandable terms. "Orwell believed passionately and politically that no meaningful idea was too difficult to be explained in simple terms to ordinary people" (ODNB). It was like Orwell, then, to present such a work to a fellow writer who was similarly working to enlighten the English people about the political structures and debates surrounding them during and following wartime. Near Fine in Very Good + dust jacket. (Inventory #: 6911)