Editor's Note

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Notes

[1] The first British edition of Nineteen Eighty‐Four (published by Secker and Warburg in London on June 8, 1949) sold more than 25,000 copies. The first American edition (published by Harcourt, Brace and Company in New York on June 13, 1949) sold 20,000 copies. The Book of the Month Club edition, which appeared in March 1952, sold more than 190,000 copies. The first edition of Animal Farm sold out in a month, nine foreign editions appeared within a year, and the United States Book of the Month Club edition sold more than a half million copies. The 1956 Signet Classic edition of Animal Farm has sold in the millions. Oddly enough, while in the midst of preparing this note, as a student and I walked from a restaurant to the university, there at the end of a lawn in front of a house was a box of books with the sign ‘Free’ in bold letters. I looked inside casually and the first book I espied was the Signet Classic Edition of Animal Farm, clearly a high school text for it has the names of two students on the inside cover as well as that of the teacher. It is now in my possession.

[2] Homage to Catalonia was coldly received by left‐wing intelligentsia, who regarded the Communists as heroes of the war. In Orwell’s lifetime Homage to Catalonia sold only about 50 copies a year.