Nineteen Eighty-Four

Orwell, George (pseud. of Eric Blair). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker, 1949. Rpt. as 1984 New York: NAL, 1961. "Casebook" edition: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism. Irving Howe, ed. 2d edn. New York: Harcourt, 1982. (An enlarged version of the 1963 1st edn., adding GO's "The Prevention of Literature," excerpts from GO's correspondence, a critical essay by John Wain, initial reviews of the novel, an essay by Michael Harrington, and some additional apparatus to aid users of the volume.) Also: Bernard Crick, ed. Nineteen Eighty-Four "With a Critical Introduction and Annotations by Bernard Crick." Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1984. (Covered with opaque tape on title page: "Published in the United States by Oxford UP, New York.")

Shows a totalitarian police state run by the oligarchs of the "Inner Party." Along with Y. Zamiatin's We and A. Huxley's Brave New World, one of the basic dystopias of the first half of the 20th c., and one of the more important works of the Modern period. / In Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, we see horrific threatening containment and the superimposition upon a human body of both the high-tech electronic and the low-tech combination of the mechanical and organic (the rat cage strapped on the face of Winston Smith. Significant also for motif of total, "Panopticon" surveillance. See under Drama, the 1984 film 1984 and the earlier 1984.