The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

Orwell was commissioned to write The Road to Wigan Pier for the Left Book Club (founded in 1936 by Victor Gollancz, who had published Orwell’s earlier novels), which had a membership of around 50 000 in 1937. Gollancz wanted a report on the conditions of unemployed miners in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and chose Orwell as a committed and sympathetic author (Orwell had written in his 1935 novel A Clergyman’s Daughter that there was an eleventh modern commandment: ‘Thou shalt not lose thy job’). The first half of The Road to Wigan Pier is Orwell’s account, just as Gollancz wanted. However, Gollancz also received, in the second half of the book, Orwell’s personal assessment of socialism, poverty, his own upbringing and England’s economic and cultural malaise.