Confessions of a Book Reviewer - George Orwell - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: George Orwell
GENRE: Essay
PUBLICATION DATE: May 3, 1946
RATING: 3.5 stars.


A witty essay by George Orwell, taking a frank look at book reviewers and their tribulations.

If the above makes you think that this essay is sympathetic to book reviewers, well… not exactly. We do get some support through lines such as this one:

“…the prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash […] but constantly INVENTING reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.”

But there is also enough light thrown upon the shortcuts taken by professional reviewers when they have to review material that they have no idea about, or worse, when they have to review an unappetising book without castigating it publicly.

The tone in the essay is sarcastically humorous, and strongly underlined with honesty.

Orwell’s literary work profile involved book reviewing, so the frustration in the essay possibly reflects his own.

Well… At least the reviewer in the essay is paid for his efforts.

This essay was first printed in The Tribune on 3rd May 1946.

You can read it online through this link:

On an aside, I wonder what Orwell would have had to say about ARC reviewers. And the book market as it is today. Were he alive, I would have insisted on a modernised sequel to this article.

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