Introduction

About the lecture

In this module, we provide an introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four, focusing in particular on: (i) the reaction of Orwell’s contemporaries to the book, including his friend Jacintha Buddicom (‘a book that changed the direction of the world’) and his publisher Fredric Warburg (‘amongst the most terrifying books I have ever read’); (ii) Orwell’s planning of the novel, which can be dated to (at least) several years before its publication in 1949; and (iii) the legacy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, especially in Communist Europe, China and post-Trump America.

About the lecturer

Dr Nathan Waddell is Senior Lecturer in Early Twentieth-Century and Modernist Literature at the University of Birmingham. He teaches and researches early twentieth-century literature, with a core emphasis on the life, work, and controversies of the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). His recent publications include Moonlighting: Beethoven and Literary Modernism (2019) and (as co-editor with J. Greenberg) 'Brave New World': Contexts and Legacies. (2016).