I know how frustrating it can be to find a book from your past. I give you credit for your dedication and perseverance.

I know you'll all be terribly disappointed, but this thread will finally come to an end.


The book has arrived and it is the much sought after cover. I took this photo of it myself. It does exist.
And here it is among the other Orwell volumes with the same (now old) cover format. New BFFs. You may be asking: why did I do this? Why did I take over six months (ten minutes here, ten minutes there) to find this particular book with this particular cover? Good question! Here's a fun fact and the reveal: I was reading that same edition of "Burmese Days" when my now very ex-wife approached me and said she wanted a divorce. I literally had my face right in it when she approached me. I had planned to read all of the Orwell books in order of publication at that time and I had only finished "Down and Out In Paris and London." It was a total shock to me and I ended up only half-reading "Burmese Days" to the end. I never picked it up again and I never went beyond that particular book in Orwell's oeuvre. I actually avoided that book and all Orwell books for a number of years afterwards. So, this quest had a double intention: to read all of Orwell's books, which I still plan to do, and to read them with the covers that I was reading when I was disrupted all of those years ago by that particular incident. So there is a very personal twist to this whole insane thread. It might still make little sense to anyone else, but I guess we all have our strange motivations for doing things. Also, I did marry again a few years after that episode and have remained happily married ever since.

Why it took so long to find that particular cover still confounds me. As I said, I came across probably every other possible edition of that book dozens of times while searching. I even came across a first edition selling for $35,000, but not that "Harvest" edition. All of the rest of the books in that series that I didn't already have were very easy to find. I highly doubt it's a rare book, but perhaps fewer of that title were printed because it's often known as Orwell's least read and least appreciated book. Some even claim that it's outright awful. I guess I'll see. All I know is that it became a frustrating challenge and I had probably looked for a few months before I even began this thread, so I probably searched closer to nine or ten months total.

Anyway, for those of you who have endured my absurd and pitiful updates, thank you. The quest has ended. I guess persistence and a lot of really agonizingly repetitive online searching paid off.

(Postscript: there is also a short collection of essays in that same cover series, but I think I'll leave that one alone; I already have a large volume of his essays handy)

I'm not familiar with any of those books, which would you recommend to start?

LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:30 am I'm not familiar with any of those books, which would you recommend to start?

I have read only Down and Out In Paris and London, which I thought was fantastic. I did read Burmese Days years ago, but the memory has faded. I'm planning on reading them in order (which was another reason that I wanted to find "A Clergyman's Daughter" sooner than later). In parallel, I'm reading an enormous collection of Orwell's essays. To put it another way, I'm kind of saturating myself with Orwell.

I finished Burmese Days today. It kept my attention pretty intensely on and off for the past 48 hours or so. Inspired by Orwell's days in the Burmese Police during the British Empire, it painted a pretty bleak and cruel picture of what empire can do to people. The main character tries to appreciate the local culture and "the natives" and this confounds everyone in the "the English Club." He falls in love with a woman who doesn't share his sentiments, but she loves his heroism, and things, somewhat predictably, don't end too well. Those who have read his essays "A Hanging" or "Shooting An Elephant" will recognize cross-themes. Do I recommend it? Definitely to those interested in anti-Imperialistic literature or Orwell, but I'm not sure whether I would recommend it enthusiastically to others. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I would consider it "a great novel," either. It does contain language and prejudices of its times, including the notorious "N-word," which the British also used in different contexts.

Similarly, Down and Out in Paris in London shares themes with the essays "The Spike" and "Clink." In all, Orwell/Blair, as the narrator, enters the world of the poor and relates his experiences in detail. They all provide fascinating insights into a different and often disturbing world. Obviously, times have changed so they also provide a historical perspective. I would recommend this book to nearly anyone just because of the new perspective it seems to provide.

Many consider A Clergyman's Daughter, the book that I searched so long for, as his "worst" book. Called an "experimental novel," one YouTube reviewer even claimed that she couldn't get a quarter of the way through it. So that should prove an interesting experiment, as I plan to read all of the books pictured previously in order of publication, and that one comes next.