"I would certainly like to review for the New Yorker occasionally if they want me to..."

6 August 1946, Typewritten

Barnhill, Isle of Jura, Argyllshire

Dear Moore,

Many thanks for your letter with the cuttings, and for paying the money into my bank.¹

I never received any letter asking whether I would do reviews in the “New Yorker”. I suppose a certain number of letters will have gone astray owing to my removal here. As to visiting the USA, I have never had the slightest idea of doing so, and I don’t know how the rumour got about. However, I would certainly like to review for the “New Yorker” occasionally if they want me to, and I suppose my doing so isn’t contingent on my being over there? I have sometimes done reviews for the New York “Nation,” and there wasn’t generally a great deal of delay. Perhaps you could handle this for me as they have approached you?

I sent a copy of the James Burnham pamphlet to Dwight Macdonald, the editor of “Politics,” (45 Astor Place, New York 3), and Arthur Ballad tells me he has also sent one. I know it would be up his street, and if nothing else materialises it might be feasible to sell a few hundred copies via “Politics.” This isn’t a thing which would largely sell in any case, but we might as well get off as many as possible.²

I am in communication with Mrs Jelenska, the Polish woman who translated “Animal Farm,” about a further translation. The people she works for don’t want “Burmese Days,” as it is too specialised a subject, and are talking of making a sort of selection of various essays and passages out of several books. I think I had better hammer it out with them myself, as there are some things I don’t want taken out of their context.

Do you know whether the corrections I sent were put right in the French translation of “Burmese Days?”

Yours sincerely,

Eric Blair

1. Leonard Moore (d.1959) was George Orwell’s longstanding literary agent.

2. "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" (titled "James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution" when published as a pamphlet) was first published as an essay in Polemic, May 1946. Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Orwell was one of the very few commentators to see the sinister influence of [Burnham's] preachings, and subject these to a critique which greatly nettled Burnham himself." One of Orwell’s biographers Michael Shelden suggested Burnham’s work, and Orwell’s criticism, had a direct influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four.