The Road to Wigan Pier
First published 1936 · English · 215 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
Commissioned to investigate conditions in the industrial north of England during the Depression, Orwell travelled to Lancashire and Yorkshire and lived among miners and the unemployed. The first part of the book describes in close detail the dangers of coal mining, cramped housing, low wages and the daily struggle to get by. The second part is more personal and argumentative, reflecting on class in Britain, his own background and the future of socialism, which he supports but criticises sharply. The book is a landmark of social reporting and shows Orwell's gift for making hardship concrete and readable, while also revealing the contradictions of his own opinions.
Quotes
In almost any revolt the leaders would tend to be people who could pronounce their aitches.
Alas! Wigan Pier had been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain.
I have noticed that people who let lodgings nearly always hate their lodgers. They want their money but they look on them as intruders and have a curiously watchful, jealous attitude which at bottom is a determination not to let the lodger make himself too much at home.
London is a sort of whirlpool which draws derelict people towards it, and it is so vast that life there is solitary and anonymous. Until you break the law nobody will take any notice of you, and you can go to pieces as you could not possibly do in a place where you had neighbours who knew you.