Burmese Days

12mo (3) ll., 371 pp., (1) blank, publisher’s orange cloth, lettered in black, pictorial pale yellow floral endpapers.

195 x 125 mm.

Orwell, George. Burmese Days.
New York, Harper & Brothers, 1934.

Extremely scarce first edition of Orwell's first novel, the true first edition, published a year before the London edition.
Fenwick A.2a.

Orwell told Henry Miller in 1936 that British publication was delayed “because [his] publisher was afraid the India Office might take steps to have it suppressed. [They] brought out a version of it with various names altered, so the American edition of it is the proper one” [Fenwick p.19].

“Some of the fictional names and incidents were uncomfortably close to fact. Some textual changes were made, and the book was first published by Harpers after the English publication of his second novel ("A Clergyman's Daughter" in 1935). Orwell consented to further textual changes, and the book was eventually published by Gollancz.

Based on his experiences as a policeman in Burma, George Orwell's first novel presents a devastating picture of British colonial rule. It describes corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where, “after all, natives were natives... an inferior people”. When Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Indian Dr. Veraswami, he defies this orthodoxy. The doctor is in danger: U Po Kyin, a corrupt magistrate, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is membership of the all-white Club, and Flory can help. Flory’s life is changed further by the arrival of beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen from Paris, who offers an escape from loneliness and the “lie” of colonial life.

After passing his India Office examination in 1922, Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma. Orwell was to resign in 1927: writing in The Road to Wigan Pier, he explained, “I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man. I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side against their tyrants”. Although he began the Burmese Days as early as 1931, it was not until the July of 1933 that Orwell had a first draft of the novel. It would take another five months before a final draft was ready for Leonard Moore to present to Victor Gollancz, who had published Down and Out in Paris and London earlier that year.

A bright and clean copy of this extremely scarce first edition of Orwell’s first novel preserved in its publisher’s orange cloth, as issued.