Big Brother is blogging
If you’ve ever wondered how a modern-day Shakespeare’s tweets would read, or what Emily Dickinson’s Flickr stream might have looked like, you may enjoy reading George Orwell’s new blog: the Orwell Diaries.
Published by The Orwell Prize, Britain’s esteemed prize for political writing, the blog is based on Orwell’s diary from August 9th, 1938 through October of 1942. The entries are published chronologically and as Orwell originally wrote them, spelling errors and all. They have, however, been modernized by the additions of hyperlinks, tags and footnotes by Orwell scholar Peter Davison.
The blog is divided into two categories–”Domestic,” which focuses on the daily details of Orwell’s life such as the weather and how many eggs his chickens laid, and “Political,” which will soon begin exploring emerging political themes that became central to both his fiction and non-fiction work.
Here’s a sample entry:
August 22, 1938, Southwold*
Cool this morning & raining most of the day. Most of the crops in & stacked. Blackberries in Suffolk much less forward than Kent, otherwise little difference in the vegetation.
When clipping fowls’ wings, clip only one wing, preferably the right (left wing keeps the ovaries warm.) Cold tea is good fertilizer for geraniums.
It’s interesting to see that even 70 years ago, writers were essentially noting what they had for lunch.
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