This is a magnificent book being a reprint of Orwell's facsimile of Nineteen Eighty Four with his handwritten corrections. The book is 'fine', immaculate, no marks or blemishes of any kind.

The Nineteen Eighty-Four facsimile was published in the UK by Secker & Warburg in, not surprisingly, 1984.

It’s actually less than half of the published novel, the rest of the manuscript having disappeared somewhere along the way, but you wouldn’t buy this copy to read the story anyway: it’s a mess. Most of the text is handwritten, some is typed, but almost all of it is crisscrossed with corrections. Each page is printed twice: once as a facsimile of the original page, and once as a tidied-up typescript.

So while Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript (to give it its full title), might not be well suited to settling down with a cup of tea and a plate of shortbread, it’s a fascinating chance to look at how one of the great writers edited and polished his prose.

The volume was published in 1984 by permission of 'The Estate of Sonia Brownell Orwell'

The volume measures 260 x 350 mm