Other editions of book The Road to Wigan Pier

An unflinching look at unemployment and life among the working classes in Britain during the Great Depression, The Road to Wigan Pier offers an in-depth examination of socio-economic conditions in the coal-mining communities of England's industrial areas, including detailed analysis of workers' wages, living conditions, and working environments. Orwell was profoundly influenced by his experiences while researching The Road to Wigan Pier and the contrasts with his own comfortable middle-class upbringing; his reactions to working and living conditions and thoughts on how these would be improved under socialism are detailed in the second half of the book.

When Orwell went to the north of England in the thirties to find out how industrial workers lived, he not only observed but shared in their experience. He stayed in cramped, dreary lodgings and subsisted on the scant, cheerless diet of the poor. He went down into the coal mines and walked crouching, as the miners did, through a one- to three-mile passage too low to stand up in. He watched the back-breaking, dangerous labor of men whose net pay then averaged $575 a year. And he knew the unemployed, those who had been out of work for so long they had sunk beyond despair into an inhuman apathy. In his searing yet beautiful account of life on the bottom rung, Orwell asks himself why Socialism-which alone, he felt, could conserve human values from the ravages of industrialism-had so little appeal. His answer was a harsh critique of the Socialism and Socialists of his time.

Excerpt from The Road to Wigan PierThe Road to Wigan Pier was first published in England in 1937. It was commissioned by the Left Book Club, which flourished in the thirties. The aim of the club, according to one of its brochures, which reflects the temper of the time, was to help in the terribly urgent struggle for World Peace a better social economic order against Fascism, by giving (to all who are determined to play their part in this struggle) such knowledge as will immensely increase their efficiency. Members of the club received each month a book se lected by a board of editors made up of Victor Gollancz, Harold Laski, and John Strachey. The book selected was issued in a special format and sold to members at the low price of two shillings Sixpence. In 1937 the club claimed more than members.The board of editors asked George Orwell to write a documentary report on conditions among the unem ployed in the north of England. He carried out this assignment, though he wrote about people who were still working as well as about the unemployed. In the latter part of the book, however, he went on to discuss, from his own Socialist but highly individual point of View, what he considered to be wrong with Socialism and Socialists.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. But The Road to Wigan Pier is also a very personal work. The author exposes his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. This essay crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.

The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism, but feels it necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong opponents.

When Orwell went to the north of England in the thirties to find out how industrial workers lived, he not only observed but shared in their experience. He stayed in cramped, dreary lodgings and subsisted on the scant, cheerless diet of the poor. He went down into the coal mines and walked crouching, as the miners did, through a one- to three-mile passage too low to stand up in. He watched the back-breaking, dangerous labor of men whose net pay then averaged $575 a year. And he knew the unemployed, those who had been out of work for so long they had sunk beyond despair into an inhuman apathy. In his searing yet beautiful account of life on the bottom rung, Orwell asks himself why socialism--which alone, he felt, could conserve human values from the ravages of industrialism--had so little appeal. His answer was a harsh critique of the socialism and socialists of his time.