Table Of ContentBy the same author
THE WHEEL OF EMPIRE A Study of the Imperial Idea in Some Late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Fiction
MACMILLAN STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
LITERATURE
Laurie Clancy
THE NOVELS OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Clare Hanson
SHORT STORIES AND SHORT FICTIONS, 188~1980
David Leon Higdon
SHADOWS OF THE PAST IN CONTEMPORARY
BRITISH FICTION
Holger Klein with John Flower and Eric Hornberger (editors)
THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN FICTION
Simon Loveday
THE ROMANCES OF JOHN FOWLES
Harold Ore!
THE LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT OF REBECCA
WEST
Tony Pinkney
WOMEN IN THE POETRY OF T. S. ELIOT
Alan Sandison
GEORGE ORWELL: AFTER 1984
Lars Ole Sauerberg
SECRET AGENTS IN FICTION
Linda M. Shires
BRITISH POETRY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Patrick Swinden
THE ENGLISH NOVEL OF HISTORY AND
SOCIETY, 194<Hlo
Eric Warner (editor)
VIRGINIA WOOLF: A CENTENARY PERSPECTIVE
Anne Wright
LITERATURE OF CRISIS, 1910-22
Further titles in preparation
George Orwell
After 1984
Alan Sandison
M~ Longwood Academic
Dover, New Hampshire
ISBN 978-0-333-38626-2 ISBN 978-1-349-18109-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18109-4
©
Alan Sandison 1974, 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1986
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
wi th the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages
First edition (entitled The Last Man in Europe:
An Essay on George Orwell) 1974
Second edition (entitled George Orwell: After 1984) 1986
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Published in the United States by Longwood Academic,
a division of the Longwood Publishing Group Inc,
51 Washington Street, Dover, New Hampshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sandison, Alan
George Orwell.-2nd ed.-(Macmillan studies in
twentieth century literature)
1. Orwell, George-Criticism and interpretation
I. Title II. Sandison, Alan. Last man in Europe
823'.912 PR602g.R8Z/
ISBN 978-0-333-38625-5 (Macmillan hardback)
ISBN 978-0-333-38626-2 (Macmillan paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sandison, Alan,
George Orwell : After I g84.
Rev. Ed. of: The Last Man in Europe-1974
Bibliography: p.
Includes Index.
1. Orwell, George, 1903-1gso-Criticism and Interpre
tation I. Sandison, Alan. Last Man in Europe.
II. Title.
PR6029.R8Z78 Ig86 828'g120g 85-1g893
ISBN 978-0-89341-575-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-89341-576-1 (paper)
To my Mother and Father
Contents
Foreword
IX
Acknowledgements
X
To Prove all Things
2 Operating inside Nature 8
3 A Laborious Calling 30
4 The Frontier of Tragic Conscience 53
5 The Sigh of the Soul 106
6 Operating in History: Ethics and Aesthetics 134
7 Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus 167
Postscript: Ig84 Ig1
Notes 218
Index 231
Foreword
Because in what follows considerable stress is laid on a certain
religious tradition, it is perhaps desirable to make it clear that
the writer is committed neither to it nor any other religion. The
object is not to proselytise (in a religious sense, at least) but to
seek to describe Orwell's fundamental moral position, and in
doing so to clarify the nature of his creative vision.
In George Orwell: After 1984, the earlier text of what was then
called The Last Man in Europe has been considerably augmented
by a chapter entitled 'Postscript: 1984' in which the book's
argument is taken further and recent developments in Orwell
criticism discussed.
A. S.
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have
kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: John
Beavan, now Lord Ardwick, who comes from a family of South
Wales miners, for extracts from The World Review; the estate of the
late Mrs Sonia Orwell, Seeker & Warburg and Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich for extracts from The Road to Wigan Pier, Keep the
Aspidistra Flying, A Clergyman's Daughter, Such, were the Joys and
©
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell; copyright 1949
©
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; copyright 1953, 1977 Sonia
©
Brownell Orwell; copyright 1981 Mrs George K. Perutz, Mrs
Miriam Gross, Dr Michael Dickson and Executors of the Estate
of Sonia Brownell Orwell; the Economist for an extract from an
article by Neil Hepburn; The Financial Times for an extract from
their issue 10 December 1983; Victor Gollancz and University of
Pittsburg Press for an extract from The Road to Miniluv: George
Orwell, the State and Godby Christopher Small; Seeker & Warburg
and Little, Brown for an extract from George Orwell: A Life by
Bernard Crick; Christopher Small for an extract from a letter to
Dr Alan Sandison.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders
but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will
be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first
opportuni ty.
1 To Prove all Things
Prove all things, hold fast that which is good
I Thessalonians V. 2 I
When Martin Luther stubbornly refused to withdraw his criti
cism of the Church before the Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521,
he was duly made aware of the extreme consequences to him
self if he persisted in his recusancy. The warning was delivered
by Johann von der Eck, Luther's interrogator before the Diet,
who clearly saw himself not just as the secretary
representative of the Archbishop of Trier but as the oracle of a
prescriptive and systematic absolutism established in the
dogma of the Universal Church. To us today the importance
of what this voice says - in von der Eck's own carefully edited
account - is virtually equalled by how it says it: we are struck
by the way it clarifies the contending ideologies, but we are
perhaps even more struck by the familiarity of its vocabulary:
Even granted that some of your books contain nothing
harmful, a point that we do not concede; but cut out your
pernicious and poisonous dogmas, cut out the blasphe
mous passages, cut out the heresies and what savours of
heresy, cut out the passages hurtful to the Catholic faith;
then no danger will arise from what is right and proper.
His sacred and imperial Majesty is prepared to deal very
leniently with these matters; and if you alter your views
will prevail upon the supreme pontiff not to destroy and
blot out the good with the bad. If, however, you obstinately
persist in your notorious errors and heresies as up to the
present, most certainly all memory of you will be wiped
out, and everything, whether right or wrong, together with
their author, will be condemned.!
