The Penguin essays of George Orwell. cover

The Penguin essays of George Orwell.

by George Orwell

Why I write -- The spike -- A hanging -- Shooting an elephant -- Bookshop memories -- Marrakech -- Charles Dickens -- Boys' weeklies -- Inside the whale -- My country right or left -- The lion and the unicorn -- Wells, Hitler and the world state -- The art of Donald McGill -- Rudyard Kipling -- Looking back on the Spanish War -- W.B. Yeats -- Poetry and the microphone -- Benefit of clergy: some notes on Salvador Dali -- Raffles and Miss Blandish -- Arthur Koestler -- Antisemitism in Britain -- In defence of P.G. Wodehouse -- Notes on Nationalism -- Good bad books -- The sporting spirit -- Nonsense poetry -- The prevention of literature -- Books v. cigarettes -- Decline of the English murder -- Politics and the English language -- Some thoughts on the common toad -- A good word for the Vicar of Bray -- Confessions of a book reviewer -- Politics vs literature: an examination of Gulliver's travels -- How the poor die -- Riding down from Bangor -- Lear, Tolstoy and the fool -- Such, such were the joys -- Writers and Leviathan -- Reflections on Gandhi.

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?