1.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
2.
Winter War
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The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940. It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939. Finland refused and the USSR invaded the country, the Soviets possessed more than three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been crippled by Soviet leader Joseph Stalins Great Purge of 1937. With more than 30,000 of its officers executed or imprisoned, including most of those of the highest ranks, because of these factors, and high morale in the Finnish forces, Finland repelled Soviet attacks for several months, much longer than the Soviets expected. However, after reorganization and adoption of different tactics, the renewed Soviet offensive overcame Finnish defenses at the borders, hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded territory representing 11% of its area and 13% of its economy to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the international reputation suffered. While the Soviet Union did not conquer all Finland, Soviet gains exceeded their pre-war demands and they gained substantial territory along Lake Ladoga, providing a buffer for Leningrad, and territory in northern Finland. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation, the end of the war cancelled the Franco-British plan to send troops to Finland through northern Scandinavia. One of the goals of the projected Franco-British operation had been to take control of northern Swedens iron ore. For this reason it was also a factor in the launching of Operation Weserübung, Nazi Germanys invasion of Denmark. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful, until the beginning of the 19th century, Finland constituted the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In 1809, to protect their capital, Saint Petersburg. While abortive because of Russias internal strife, these attempts ruined Russias relations with the Finns, the new Bolshevik Russian government was weak, and with the threat of civil war looming Soviet Russia recognized the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration of independence. Sovereignty was fully achieved in May 1918 after a civil war. Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, from which it sought security guarantees, nevertheless, the government of Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Another Finnish military policy was the top secret military cooperation between Finland and Estonia, the 1920s and early 1930s were a politically unstable time in Finland
3.
A. J. Cronin
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Archibald Joseph Cronin, MBChB, MD, DPH, MRCP was a Scottish novelist and physician. His best-known novel was The Citadel, about a doctor in a Welsh mining village who quickly moves up the ladder in London. Cronin had observed this scene closely as a Medical Inspector of Mines and this book promoted controversial new ideas about medical ethics which largely inspired the launch of the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel, set in the North East of England, was The Stars Look Down, both these novels were adapted for film, as were Hatters Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His novella Country Doctor was adapted for a long-running BBC radio and TV series Dr Finlays Casebook and his paternal grandparents emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland and were glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870 and his maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage, Cronins parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School, when he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveler, died from tuberculosis. From an early age, he was a golfer, a sport he enjoyed throughout his life. The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where he attended St Aloysius College in the Garnethill area of the city and he played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels, The Minstrel Boy. A family decision that he should study for either the church or medicine was settled by Cronin himself and he won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. He was absent during the 1916–1917 session for naval service, in 1919 he graduated with highest honours, with the degree of MBChB. Later that year he made a trip to India as ships surgeon on a liner, Cronin went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health and his MRCP. In 1925, he was awarded an M. D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, during World War I, Cronin served as a Surgeon Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war, he trained at various hospitals including Bellahouston and Lightburn Hospitals in Glasgow and he undertook general practice work in a small village on the Clyde, Garelochhead, as well as in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. He was involved in the disaster at Ystfad Colliery in Pengelly, where miners were drowned. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening his own thriving medical practice in Notting Hill, Cronin was also the medical officer for Whiteleys at this time and was becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology. In 1930, after being diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne, he was able to indulge his lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously written nothing but prescriptions
4.
Daphne du Maurier
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Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE was an English author and playwright. Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories feature a conventional happy ending. These bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by the critics, many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories The Birds and Dont Look Now. Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall where most of her works are set, as her fame increased through her novels and the films based upon them, she became more reclusive. Her father was the actor Gerald du Maurier, and her grandfather was the artist, Daphne du Maurier was born in London, the middle child of three daughters of the prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier and her elder sister Angela also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter. Her family connections helped her in establishing her career. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, Du Maurier was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J. M. Barries inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldnt Grow Up. As a young child, she met many of the brightest stars of the theatre, on meeting Tallulah Bankhead, she was quoted as saying that the actress was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The novel Rebecca became one of du Mauriers most successful works. It was a hit on its publication, went on to sell nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965, has never gone out of print, and has been adapted for both stage and screen several times. In the U. S. she won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, in the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the nations best loved novel on the BBCs 2003 survey The Big Read. Other significant works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, the last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil War, written from the Royalist perspective of her adopted Cornwall. Several of her novels have also been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchmans Creek, Hungry Hill. The Hitchcock film The Birds is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Alfred Hitchcocks Rebecca and Nicolas Roegs Dont Look Now. Hitchcocks treatment of Jamaica Inn was disavowed by both director and author, due to a complete re-write of the ending to accommodate the ego of its star, Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of My Cousin Rachel. Frenchmans Creek fared rather better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944, Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat, which she partly financed. Du Maurier was often categorised as a romantic novelist, a term she deplored, given her novels rarely have a happy ending, in this light, she has more in common with the sensation novels of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired
5.
J. G. Ballard
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James Graham J. G. Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. In the late 1960s, Ballard produced a variety of short stories. Described by The Guardian as the best British novel about the Second World War, in the following decades until his death in 2009, Ballards work shifted toward the form of the traditional crime novel. Several of his works have been adapted into films, including David Cronenbergs controversial 1996 adaptation of Crash. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballards work as being occupied with eros, thanatos, mass media and his mother was Edna, née Johnstone. Ballard was born and raised in the Shanghai International Settlement, an area under foreign control where people lived an American style of life and he was sent to the Cathedral School, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church near the Bund, Shanghai. After the Japanese attack on Hong Kong, the Japanese occupied the International Settlement in Shanghai, in early 1943, they began to intern Allied civilians, and Ballard was sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center with his parents and younger sister. He spent over two years, the remainder of World War II, in the internment camp and his family lived in a small area in G block, a two-story residence for 40 families. He attended school in the camp, the teachers being camp inmates from a number of professions. These experiences formed the basis of Empire of the Sun, although Ballard exercised considerable artistic licence in writing the book and it has been supposed that Ballards exposure to the atrocities of war at an impressionable age explains the apocalyptic and violent nature of much of his fiction. Martin Amis wrote that Empire of the Sun gives shape to what shaped him, however, Ballards own account of the experience was more nuanced, I dont think you can go through the experience of war without ones perceptions of the world being forever changed. But also, I have—I wont say happy—not unpleasant memories of the camp, I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on—but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time. In late 1945, after the end of the war, his mother returned to Britain with Ballard and they lived in the outskirts of Plymouth, and he attended The Leys School in Cambridge. He won an essay prize whilst at the school but did not contribute to the school magazine, after a couple of years his mother and sister returned to China, rejoining Ballards father, leaving Ballard to live with his grandparents when not boarding at school. In 1949 he went on to study medicine at Kings College, Cambridge, at university, Ballard was writing avant-garde fiction heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and surrealist painters. At this time, he wanted to become a writer as well as pursue a medical career, however, he was asked to leave at the end of the year. Ballard then worked as a copywriter for an agency and as an encyclopaedia salesman. He kept writing short fiction but found it impossible to get published, in spring 1954 Ballard joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to the Royal Canadian Air Force flight-training base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
6.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
7.
William Gibson
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William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Gibson notably coined the term cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome and these early works have been credited with renovating science fiction literature after it had fallen largely into insignificance in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored the sociological developments of urban environments, postindustrial society. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for the first time and his more recent novel, The Peripheral, returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction concerns. In 1999, The Guardian described Gibson as probably the most important novelist of the past two decades, while the Sydney Morning Herald called him the prophet of cyberpunk. His work has been cited as an influence across a variety of disciplines spanning academia, design, film, literature, music, cyberculture and his family moved frequently during Gibsons youth owing to his fathers position as manager of a large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia, Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of the death, tom Maddox has commented that Gibson grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed. A few days after the death, Gibsons mother returned them from their home in Norfolk to Wytheville, at the age of 12, Gibson wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer. He spent a few years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School. Becoming frustrated with his academic performance, Gibsons mother threatened to send him to a boarding school, to her surprise. He resented the structure of the boarding school but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. On the SAT exams, he scored 148 out of 150 in the section but 5 out of 150 in mathematics. In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam war draft, at his draft hearing, he honestly informed interviewers that his intention in life was to sample every mind-altering substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he did not literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me, after the hearing he went home and purchased a bus ticket to Toronto, and left a week or two later. He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview, After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Torontos first head shop, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the citys community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide
8.
Homage to Catalonia
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Homage to Catalonia is George Orwells personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938, the book was not published in the United States until February 1952, when it appeared with an influential preface by Lionel Trilling. The only translation published in Orwells lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948, a French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until five years after Orwells death. In June 1937, the leftist political party with whose militia he served was declared an illegal organisation, and Orwell was consequently forced to either flee or face imprisonment. Having arrived in Barcelona on 26 December 1936, Orwell told John McNair, the Independent Labour Partys representative there and he also told McNair that he would like to write about the situation and endeavour to stir working class opinion in Britain and France. McNair took him to the POUM barracks, where Orwell immediately enlisted, by his own admission, it was somewhat by chance that Orwell joined the POUM, rather than the far larger Soviet supported Communist-run International Brigades. Pollitt seems to have taken a dislike to him. And soon concluded that his visitor was politically unreliable, Orwell then telephoned the headquarters of the ILP, and its officials agreed to help him. The party was willing to accredit him as a correspondent for the New Leader, the ILPs weekly paper with which he was familiar, the ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona. The party was affiliated with the independent socialist group, the POUM, Orwell served on the Aragon front for 115 days. It was not until the end of April 1937 that he was granted leave and was able to see his wife Eileen in Barcelona again, Eileen wrote on 1 May that she found him, a little lousy, dark brown, and looking really very well. The Spanish government was seeking to direct control on Barcelona. The government decided to occupy the building and to disarm the workers, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT staff resisted. The struggle was called off by the CNT leaders after four days, large government forces were arriving from Valencia. On 17 May 1937, Largo Caballero resigned, the NKVD-controlled secret police pursued its persecution of persons who opposed the Moscow line. On 16 June, when the POUM was declared illegal, the Communists turned its headquarters in Barcelona into a prison for Trotskyists, leaders were handed over to NKVD operatives and taken to a secret prison in Madrid. Andreu Nin taken to Alcalá de Henares, where he was interrogated from 18 to 21 June and he was then moved to a summer house outside the city which belonged to the wife of Hidalgo de Cisneros and tortured to death. Diego Abad de Santillan remarked, Whether Juan Negrín won with his communist cohorts, or Franco won with his Italians and Germans, at the front, Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20 May 1937 and nearly killed
9.
Fantasy
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Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other elements as a main plot element, theme. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, in popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy works by many writers, artists, filmmakers. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, history. The identifying trait of fantasy is the reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that whereas realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, an author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters, plots, and settings that are impossible in reality. Fantasy has often compared with science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements, a science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seeming possible through logical scientific and/or technological extrapolation, whereas fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. The imagined elements of fantasy do not need an explanation to be narratively functional. Authors have to rely on the suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment. Despite both genres heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable, horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Beginning perhaps with the earliest written documents, mythic and other elements that would come to define fantasy. MacDonald was an influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, lord Dunsany established the genres popularity in both the novel and the short story form. Many popular mainstream authors also began to write fantasy at this time, including H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Indeed, juvenile fantasy was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, intended for children, though works for adults only verged on fantasy. Political and social trends can affect a societys reception towards fantasy, in the early 20th century, the New Culture Movements enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature
10.
Down and Out in Paris and London
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Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities, the first part is an account of living in near-destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. After giving up his post as a policeman in Burma to become a writer, Orwell moved to rooms in Portobello Road, London at the end of 1927 when he was 24. In spring of 1928 he moved to Paris and lived at 6 Rue du Pot de Fer in the Latin Quarter, American writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had lived in the same area. Following the Russian Revolution there was a large Russian emigre community in Paris, Orwells aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He led a social life, worked on his novels and had several articles published in avant-garde journals. Orwell fell seriously ill in March 1929 and shortly afterwards had money stolen from the lodging house, the thief was probably not the young Italian described in Down and Out. Whoever reduced Orwell to destitution did him a good turn, his ten weeks in Paris sowed the seed of his first published book. Whether through necessity or just to collect material, and probably both, he undertook work as a dishwasher in restaurants. In August 1929 he sent a copy of The Spike to the Adelphi magazine in London, Orwell left Paris in December 1929 and returned to England, going straight home to his parents house in Southwold. Later he acted as a tutor to a handicapped child there and also undertook further tramping expeditions, culminating in a stint working in the Kent hop fields in August. After this adventure, he ended up in the Tooley Street kip, Orwells first version of Down and Out was called A Scullions Diary. Completed in October 1930, it used only his Paris material and he offered it to Jonathan Cape in the summer of 1931. Cape rejected it in the autumn and it was in the home of Mabel Fierz that Orwell then discarded the typescript. She had, with her husband, a London businessman named Francis, Fierz at this point took it to a literary agent, Leonard Moore, who recognised it as a natural for the new house of Gollancz. Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish the work, subject to the removal of bad language and some identifiable names, the title improvised by Gollancz, Confessions of a Down and Outer bothered Orwell. Would The Confessions of a Dishwasher do as well, I would rather answer to dishwasher than down & out. At the last minute, Gollancz shortened the title to Down and Out in Paris, the author, after possibilities including X, P. S
