"Many standard works are now completely out of print..."

First published 30 June 1944

Six million books, it is said, perished in the blitz of 1940, including a thousand irreplaceable titles. Most of them were probably no loss, but it is dismaying to find how many standard works are now completely out of print. Paper is forthcoming for the most ghastly tripe, as you can see by glancing into any bookshop window, while all the reprint editions, such as the Everyman Library, have huge gaps in their lists. Even so well-known a work of reference as Webster’s dictionary is no longer obtainable unless you run across a copy second-hand. About a year ago I had to do a broadcast on Jack London. When I started to collect the material I found that those of his books that I most wanted had vanished so completely that even the London Library could not produce them. To get hold of them I should have had to go to the British Museum reading-room, which in these days is not at all easy of access. And this seems to me a disaster, for Jack London is one of those border-line writers whose works might be forgotten altogether unless somebody takes the trouble to revive them. Even The Iron Heel was distinctly a rarity for some years, and was only reprinted because Hitler’s rise to power made it topical . . .¹

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This is an extract from George Orwell’s column in Tribune, first published June 1944. All rights reserved. It remains under copyright in the US and may not be distributed or reused in any way without permission from the Orwell Estate.

1. In the broadcast Orwell refers to here, he describes London’s novel The Iron Heel as “a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of Fascism". Michael Shelden, Orwell’s biographer, has argued that London was an important influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four.