Keep the Aspidistra Flying

A new edition of Orwell's end-of-tether third novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor

First published in 1936, and drawing on Orwell's own experiences of working in a Hampstead bookshop, Keep the Aspidistra Flying tracks the career of Gordon Comstock ('nearly 30 and moth-eaten already') a struggling poet who tries to rebel against the conventions of middle-class English life, only to be drawn inexorably back into the world that grinds him down.

This new edition includes an introduction and extensive end-notes, and an appendix containing original responses to the novel as well as letters and documents from the period in which it was written.

D. J. Taylor is a writer and critic. His collection of short stories, After Bathing at Baxter's was published in 1997 and he is the author of six novels: Great Eastern Land (1986); Real Life (1992); English Settlement (1996); Trespass (1998), a satire of 1970s England; The Comedy Man (2001), the story of one half of a comedy duo; and Kept: A Victorian Mystery (2006). Several of his books are set in his home city of Norwich.

His books of non-fiction include Afer the War: The Novel and England Since 1945 (1993); A Vain Conceit: British fiction in the 1980s (1989), a critical look at the quality of fiction-writing in Britain; and most recently, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940.

He is also well-known for his biographies: Thackeray (1999); and Orwell: The Life, published in 2003 to coincide with the centenary of Orwell's birth. This book won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award.

A new edition of Orwell's end-of-tether third novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor First published in 1936, and drawing on Orwell's own experiences of working in a Hampstead bookshop, Keep the Aspidistra Flying tracks the career of Gordon Comstock ('nearly 30 and moth-eaten already') a struggling poet who tries to rebel against the conventions of middle-class English life, only to be drawn inexorably back into the world that grinds him down.This new edition includes an introduction and extensive end-notes, and an appendix containing original responses to the novel as well as letters and documents from the period in which it was written.

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