Keep the Aspidistra Flying

George Orwell

A new edition of Orwell's end-of-tether third novel introduced and annotated by his biographer D.J. Taylor

First published in 1936 and drawing on Orwell's own experiences of working in a Hampstead bookshop Keep the Aspidistra Flying tracks the career of Gordon Comstock ('nearly 30 and moth-eaten already') a struggling poet who tries to rebel against the conventions of middle-class English life only to be drawn inexorably back into the world that grinds him down.

This new edition includes an introduction and extensive end-notes and an appendix containing original responses to the novel as well as letters and documents from the period in which it was written.