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"HE LOVED BIG BROTHER"
ORWELL,
GEORGE. Nineteen
Eighty-Four
"On the sixth day of
Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the
singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling
of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the
grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the
booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was
quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up
into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the
2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last
day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to
pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not
after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia
was an ally."
FIRST EDITION of Orwell's classic novel, of great influence on
twentieth-century thought.
"Orwell's warning of the
potential dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his
contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and
many of its coined words and phrases (“Big Brother is watching you,”
“newspeak,” “doublethink”) became bywords for modern political abuses" (Britannica).
London: Secker & Warburg,
1949. Octavo, original green cloth, original green dust jacket. Issued
in both green (this copy) and red dust jackets (no priority
established). Book very good; dust jacket with light edgewear and
creasing and nearly invisible archival tape repair to several closed
tears. There is no fading to the spine of the dust jacket (the jacket is
very prone to fading and is rarely found unfaded). $3500.
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