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BOOKS AND LETTERS FROM THE LIBRARY OF ANTHONY POWELL
Lot 307

ORWELL (GEORGE)
Animal Farm, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED "Tony Powell from Geo: Orwell" on front free endpaper, Secker & Warburg, 1945

24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £92,500 inc. premium

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ORWELL (GEORGE)

Animal Farm, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED "Tony Powell from Geo: Orwell" on front free endpaper, with additional 5-line note signed ("George") relating to this volume tipped-in on front paste-down, publisher's green cloth, spine faded [Fenwick A10a], 8vo, Secker & Warburg, 1945

Footnotes

FIRST EDITION INSCRIBED BY ORWELL TO ANTHONY POWELL, fellow writer and one of his closest friends, with an additional note "This is rather a dingy copy but I thought you'd rather have the 1st edition. Hoping to see you soon. George".

Animal Farm "has the rare distinction of being at the same time an attractive and popular children's book, and a savage and damaging satire on Communism... Orwell's exposure of the ruthless, totalitarian nature of Communism is his greatest political achievement. It happens to be chiefly linked with what is also his most accomplished literary work" (Anthony Powell, Miscellaneous Verdicts, 1990, p.281).

Throughout the writing of Animal Farm Powell was close to Orwell, who in 1944 moved to Islington, "not traditional terrain, but near to central London, and not uncomfortably removed from friends such as Powell and [Malcolm] Muggeridge" (D.J. Taylor, Orwell. The Life, 2003, p.339). Together with his wife Violet, Powell entertained Orwell, his wife Eileen and their adopted child at their home at Chester Gate. After the fame and attention that came Orwell's way after the unexpected success of Animal Farm, Powell "noted how Orwell's immediate response... was to retreat from a world in which his marginal, outsider status could no longer be guaranteed", leading to his removal from London to Jura in Scotland. Inscribed copies of books by Orwell are scarce.

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