Nineteen Eighty-Four

[1949] [Blair, Eric] (1903-50). Nineteen Eighty-Four. By George Orwell [pseud.]. London: Secker & Warburg. Rpt. as vol. 9 of The Complete Works of George Orwell. Ed. Peter Davison. London: Secker & Warburg, 1987 with a “Textual Note (327-41). U.S. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949. Ed. With a Critical Introduction and Annotations by Bernard Crick. Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1984 with the “Introduction” (1-154), the “Annotations to the Text” (429-49), and an “Index to Orwell’s Text” (456-60). Collector’s Ed. illus. Frank Kelly Freas with an “Introduction” by James Gunn (iii-xiii) [Rpt. in Gunn, Paratexts: Introductions to Science Fiction and Fantasy (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 45-51] Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1992. Centennial edition New York: Harcourt Brace, 2003, with a “Foreword” by Thomas Pynchon (vii-xxvi) and an “Afterword” by Erich Fromm (324-37) originally published in 1984 (New York: Signet Classics, 1961), 257-67.  A dramatized version was published as George Orwell’s 1984. A Play in Three Acts. Adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E. Hall, Jr. and William A. Miles, Jr. Chicago, IL: Dramatic Publishing, Inc., 1963. A graphic novel version illustrated by Fido Nesti was published in Brazil as 1984 in 2020, as Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Graphic Novel. London: Penguin, 2020; and as 1984: The Graphic Novel. Boston, MA/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. See also Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript. Ed. Peter Davison. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich/Weston, MA: M & S Press, 1984. Films were directed by Michael Anderson with the text adapted by Ralph Gilbert Bettison and William Templeton in 1956 and adapted and directed by Michael Radford in 1984. An adaptation for BBC TV by Thomas Nigel Kneale (1924-2006) broadcast December 12, 1954, raised considerable controversy, including questions in Parliament, and the re-broadcast on December 16, attracted a huge audience, and is available in Blu-Ray and DVD. London: BFI, 2022. A multi-media version with a scenario by Johanna Mercer and directed by Christopher Newton was first presented at the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, Canada September 18, 1984. Another adapted by Pavel Kohout. Trans. Jiri Zizka and Michael Ladenson was first presented at the Joyce Theatre, New York, in July 1987. See the review in The New York Times (July 22, 1987). An opera version by Loren Maazel opened at the Royal Opera House, London, March 3, 2005. In addition, there have been a number of other radio, TV, and theatre adaptations. While many editions and reprints have the title in numbers, Orwell insisted that it be spelled out. DLC, HRC, MoU-St, PSt

Classic repressive totalitarian dystopia. The author's original title was The Last Man in Europe. A novel on Orwell writing Nineteen Eighty-Four is Dennis Glover, The Last Man in Europe. New York: Overlook Press, 2017.