Description
About the Author
Douglas Kerr is Honorary Professor of English at University of Hong Kong and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. His first book was about the war poet Wilfred Owen and much of his later work studies English literature about the East in colonial and postcolonial times. His most recent book is Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession, and Practice (OUP, 2013) and he is general editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Conan Doyle.
Reviews
Kerr's insights on Orwell and Rudyard Kipling are particularly perceptive. No other writer was more important to Orwell: his whole life "was a conversation, or quarrel, with Kipling", quoting him frequently throughout his writings. While it is tempting to see the two writers as opposites, Kerr is keen to identify their similarities: "Both of them were patriots though highly critical of their fellow-countrymen and frequently of their government. Both were public intellectuals who used their writing to raise political consciousness. Both loved animals and wrote books about them and both had a strong feeling for the English countryside". * Richard Lance Keeble, English Studies *
eminently readable, and a fascinating new look at Orwell's work * , Shiny New Books *
Thoughtful and methodical, Orwell and Empire is a good guide to [Orwell's] complex and not always consistent imperial attitudes. * Professor Krishan Kumar, The Times Literary Supplement *
[T]his is among the most enjoyable books on the subject of Orwell that I have discovered in a long time, and without doubt the finest work on Orwell's connection to empire and the east that it has been my privilege to read. * Ron Bateman, The Orwell Society *
Book Information
ISBN 9780192864093
Author Douglas Kerr
Format Hardback
Page Count 216
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 222mm * 140mm * 15mm