The diaries will be published as a sort of a blog, with entries added daily, exactly 70 years after Orwell wrote them. Running from 1938 through 1942, the diaries cover the early days of World War II as well as Orwell’s travels in Morocco, where he recuperated from injuries he received in the Spanish Civil War. There’s also a lot about chicken farming.
Orwell kept different diaries for different things. “His domestic diaries show that Orwell was a very enthusiastic and conscientious gardener and farmer,” says Gordon Bowker, one of Orwell’s many biographers. “He would detail the state of the weather, what he had planted, what needed to be pruned, etc.” Orwell’s political diaries, which will start appearing from Sept. 7, chronicle his daily thoughts on Europe’s descent into World War II. Those writings, says Bowker, are based mostly on the many newspapers Orwell read and show him “trying out his political ideas.”
This should be really interesting. Orwell is one of my favorite authors and who knows what his opinion of the blogosphere would be if he were still alive, but I think this is a great medium for publishing his diaries and being able to get to know his inner-thoughts/daily routines in a slow and deliberate manner is exciting. The slow, daily updates, might be frustrating when compared to being able to access all of the diary at once, but simultaneously adds to the voyeuristic aspect of reading someone’s diary in the first place. Color me intrigued.
