First edition. 8vo. Original cream wrapper with orange lettering, dust jacket. London, Secker & Warburg, 1941.
No. 10 in the Searchlight Books essays series, edited by Orwell and T.R. Fyvel. A rather scare wartime publication, with the printing being affected by a bomb that hit the Warburg offices in April 1941. Indeed, the publication note of this work states, "Typescript and 1st proof destroyed by enemy action... May 1941. First published... July 1941".
Provenance: not identified as such, but from the library of Orwell scholar and former UCL deputy librarian Ian Angus. Angus was the co-editor of Orwell's Collected Journalism, Essays and Letters published in 1968 and also later contributed to editing the enormous 20-volume edition of Orwell's Complete Works published 1997-8.
An unusually nice copy, dust jacket and wrappers rather browned and dust soiled, some wear to edges. Endpapers browned, but contents otherwise generally clean.
