The Road to Wigan Pier

The Road to Wigan Pier is a book in two parts: the first half is Orwell’s description of working-class life in industrial communities of the north of England, the second examines his own political views.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Amelia Gentleman.

The Road to Wigan Pier is an insightful and powerful account of lives lived in poverty and deprivation in a time of low wages and meagre government support. Orwell describes dismal housing (including the lodging house where he stays), harsh working conditions and the devastating effects of unemployment. And he also vividly describes the courage and dignity of the people he meets. In the second half of the book, Orwell examines his own political and social affiliations with an impressive ability to provoke and to question. He defends middle-class values whilst critiquing the failures of his own class, he advocates socialism whilst criticizing the socialist movement in England.

About the Author

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father was a civil servant. After studying at Eton, he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma for several years, and this inspired his first novel, Burmese Days. After two years in Paris, he returned to England to work as a teacher and then in a bookshop. In 1936 he travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, where he was badly wounded. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC. A prolific journalist and essayist, Orwell wrote some of the most influential books in English literature, including the dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four and his political allegory Animal Farm. He died from tuberculosis in 1950.