"WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"

ORWELL, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript. Weston, Massachusetts: M & S Press, 1984. Folio (10 by 14 inches), original half blue morocco, original marbled boards, original slipcase, original shipping box. $1000.

Limited edition, number 297 of 275 copies (out of a total edition of 330) of this facsimile edition of the extant manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four, edited by Peter Davidson and with a preface by Daniel G. Siegel, handsomely bound at Grey Parrot bindery.

Published in 1984, this sumptuous privately printed edition presents in facsimile all that survives of the preliminary draft versions of Nineteen Eight-Four, a manuscript described by Sonia Orwell as "the only MS of any of George's books in existence." Orwell's classic work of dystopian fiction was begun in 1946 and composed in four stages. The extant manuscript provides the narrative of Nineteen Eighty-Four in outline from the beginning almost to the conclusion, with some gaps. As noted by Peter Davison in his Introduction to this edition, "despite all the rewriting revealed by this facsimile, it is remarkable how closely what has survived adheres to the main sweep of the narrative of Nineteen Eighty-Four. All the principal features, except the Appendix on Newspeak, are present, suggesting that the story had been pretty fully formed in Orwell's mind by the time he sat down to write it." In 1952 Sonia Orwell contributed "the original manuscript of Orwell's last novel, partly in typescript but mainly in his own manuscript" to a charity auction at Christie's. It sold to Scribner's of New York who then arranged a sale to a collector in Kansas. Scribner's again handled the manuscript in 1969 when it was sold to Daniel G. Siegel. It is now at Brown University Library. With 190 color facsimile illustrations and a full transcript of Orwell's manuscript.

A fine copy.