Orwell wanted the book published pseudonymously he feared it might upset his family. The modifications were made (as Blair wrote Moore: “names are to be changed, swearwords etc cut.”). Gollancz, who decided to publish Blair's effort, wanted the book to be called “Confessions of a Down and Out in Paris and London,” and words and passages cut to avoid possible libel actions and to ensure sales to libraries. A friend of the dejected Blair interested the literary agent Leonard Moore in the work, and he in turn brought it to the attention of the brash publisher-promoter Victor Gollancz, who since founding his firm in 1928 had shaken up English book publishing. Reworked and entitled “A Scullion's Diary” it was also rejected by Faber & Faber, in a letter penned by T. publishing firm Jonathan Cape, which also rejected an expanded version subsequently submitted. a fourth-rate private school wrote and rewrote what was to be published as Down and Out in Paris and London.” The first version (“Days in London and Paris”) was rejected by the U.K. During the next three years, as Orwell expert Peter Davison recounts, Blair went “tramping and lived with down and outs: wrote reviews. Blair returned to England from Paris around Christmas 1929.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |