“It could disappear forever”: Anger over the sale of the George Orwell archive | George Orwell

George Orwell’s archives provide an invaluable insight into the personality of one of the most influential British writers of the 20th century. They shed light on the way he wrote his most memorable books, how sensitive he was to criticism and how he feared legal threats could ruin his work. Now the treasure trove that is the extensive archive of correspondence and contracts assembled by Orwell’s original publisher, Victor Gollancz, could be scattered to the winds in an act of “cultural vandalism”.

Crucial correspondence about the Nineteen hundred and eighty-four Author and observer “Correspondent” is offered for sale on the open market after the publisher’s parent company decided to sell the archive in 2018 as the warehouse was closed.

Richard Blair, 80, whose father Eric Blair wrote under the pseudonym George Orwell, is dismayed by the loss: “It is terribly sad… Once Gollancz material is acquired by private collectors, it could disappear into obscurity forever.”

Peter Harrington, a leading antiquarian bookseller, is currently offering Gollancz papers relating to Orwell’s second novel for £75,000. The daughter of a clergymanThese include his original contract, a letter with his corrections and a report by Gerald Gould from 1934 – then fiction editor of the observer and a manuscript reader of Gollancz – on the grounds that it should be published.

Harrington is also selling letters relating to Orwell’s third novel for £50,000. Keep the Aspidistra flyingwhich show that libel concerns led to significant changes in the final text. In 1936, Orwell, dismayed by Gollancz’s requests for changes, wrote that he would nevertheless do everything in his power to meet his publisher’s demands – “without ruining the book entirely”.

Jonkers Rare Books, another well-known bookseller, is selling papers on The road to Wigan PierOrwell’s classic study of industrial poverty in the north of England. It contains a long letter to Gollancz in which he rejects accusations that he is a bourgeois snob, calls on him to intervene, and threatens legal action against his critics.

Documents on The daughter of a clergyman Orwell’s letter in which he makes it clear that none of the characters can be linked to living persons. Correspondence about Animal Farm documents Gollancz’s famous rejection of the classic anti-totalitarian fable, first published in 1945, due to the pro-Soviet political climate created by World War II. Orwell wrote, “I must tell you that I think it is politically totally unacceptable from your point of view (it is anti-Stalinist).” Gollancz initially objected, saying he was committed to the Stalinist line, but after reading the manuscript, he wrote on April 4, 1944, “You were right and I was wrong. I am so sorry. I have returned the manuscript.”

Victor Gollancz founded one of the most influential publishing houses of the 20th century. The company was acquired by the Orion Group, which became part of Hachette, which in turn belongs to the French multinational Lagardère.

Rick Gekoski, a leading antiquarian bookseller, was asked to sell the archive, which included correspondence with Kingsley Amis and Daphne du Maurier, among other Gollancz authors. Last week he dismissed criticism of the sale as “misguided,” saying: “The whole thing was approved by Malcolm Edwards, the publishing director of Orion, and sold at the request of the board.” In Gekoski’s 2021 book Guarded by dragonshe wrote: “No one on Orion’s board cared where they went or to whom.”

He remembered a warehouse full of tens of thousands of volumes and dozens of filing cabinets – “rusty and dusty, crammed with all of the Gollancz publishing house’s production, editorial and copyright files, the majority of which had perhaps been unopened for 50 years.”

After unsuccessfully attempting to sell the entire archive to various institutions for around a million pounds, it was divided up among dozens of dealers, private collectors and libraries: “The board simply asked us to get rid of as much material as possible… and the rest… had to be thrown away.”

Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, said: “The fact that no one opened those filing cabinets for 50 years was because they were idiots and didn’t understand the value of the archive. Why didn’t their board consult experts and historians who would have understood that they might have needed to make a profit from it but would have seen the real public value? Instead they dispersed a national archive.”

Orwell biographer DJ Taylor recalled that when he and the Orwell Foundation discovered that the Gollancz archive was to be sold, they tried to raise money: “We couldn’t because they were very valuable documents. We were, of course, afraid that the archive would simply be sold piecemeal.”

He added that the publisher’s handling of his “incredibly valuable” archive had always been “amateurish.” He recalled lax security measures when he was working on his first Orwell book 23 years ago. “I remember coming into the office one time and they said, ‘Oh, where’d it go?’ Somewhere in the building, a box of Orwell’s letters to Victor Gollancz had just disappeared,” he said.

Bill Hamilton, literary agent at AM Heath and executor of Orwell’s estate, said: “Archiving literary material is just not something that commercial publishers particularly think about, which is somewhat ironic.”

He noted that most authors today are “very conscious of the role their archive plays in their literary heritage.” The late Wolf Hall The author Hilary Mantel, for example, sent her works to the Huntington Library in America.

Liz Thomson, who covered the book trade for 35 years, described the sell-off as “cultural vandalism”: “Britain’s cultural heritage has been sold cheaply through second-hand bookshops… What hope is there for future biographers and historians?”

She lifted Gollancz’s Animal Farm Correspondence – sold by Jonkers for £100,000 – including Orwell’s 1944 letter describing the novel as a “little fairy tale… with political significance” and the publisher’s rejection. “Gollancz refused to publish the novel because he feared it might endanger Anglo-Soviet relations… The archive is priceless,” Thomson said.

The publisher’s sale contrasts with Richard Blair’s efforts to maintain an archive of the writer’s correspondence. In 2021, he bought 50 letters to donate to the Orwell Archive at University College London, fearing they would otherwise have ended up on the market and “never been seen again.”

Pom Harrington, son of the Harrington founder, said: “Of course it would be nice if institutions agreed to acquire these unique materials. It is not reasonable for them to expect them to be given to them as a gift.” Christiaan Jonkers, founder of Jonkers Rare Books, said: “There would not be nearly as much material of this kind made available if people like us did not facilitate this process. Even something as monumental as this Orwell archive would perhaps simply be thrown away if the market did not exist.”

Hachette declined to comment.