A Clergyman's Daughter

Written by George Orwell

Narrated by Geoffrey Giuliano and The Ark

A Clergyman's Daughter is a 1935 novel by English author George Orwell. It tells the story of Dorothy Hare, the clergyman's daughter of the title, whose life is turned upside down when she suffers an attack of amnesia. It is Orwell's most formally experimental novel, featuring a chapter written entirely in dramatic form, but he was never satisfied with it and he left instructions that after his death it was not to be reprinted. Despite these instructions, Orwell did consent to the printing of cheap editions "of any book which may bring in a few pounds for my heirs" following his death.

 

George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

 

Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen EightyFour (1949). His nonfiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of workingclass life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Audio Arts
• Release date: Aug 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887670317

George Orwell

George Orwell (1903–1950), the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in India and educated at Eton. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living by writing. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of 1984 (1949), which brought him worldwide fame. 

Reviews for A Clergyman's Daughter

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

he second of Orwell's published novels. As in the first (Burmese Days) the reader is confronted with the total powerlessness of the lead character. It is tough reading the life of a person unable to make choices. Dorothy is a Rector's unmarried daughter, and her life choices seem to have all been made for her. Life is a grind, and there are decades of it to come. The plot is spiced up by a plot twist detour into penury and street living - but choices remained a distant prospect.I'm enjoying the reading, but if Orwell hadn't written Animal Farm and 1984, I think both he and his other fiction would have been forgotten by now.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Orwell notoriously categorised his own novel as "bollocks" in a letter to Henry Miller shortly after its publication — you can see his point, but Orwell even on a bad day still has something. The outer sections of the book may be rather routine and forgettable, but the hop-picking chapter is powerful stuff, and even the slightly clumsy James Joyce pastiche in the Trafalgar Square section manages to be quite effective from time to time. Orwell is able to write with conviction when he's talking about living rough, although there's a lot of overlap with Down and out in Paris and London, of course. (The school chapter is also clearly based on personal experience, but oddly enough doesn't work as well: Orwell just comes across as too bitter to be convincing.)So it's not a total waste of time, but the whole thing doesn't really mesh together to make a working novel. Probably because Orwell was weak enough let Dorothy be plucked out of poverty by a fairy godfather, as we knew she ought to be, but then couldn't force himself to write a romantic happy-end, so that we're left high and dry between cold pessimism and rosy optimism, not knowing where we are meant to be...

[mrminjares · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

George Orwell's second Novel The Clergyman's Daughter is set on a small town in England where attendance at mass is dwindling and the church is falling into disrepair. The Clergyman is a crotchety old fellow who relied on his daughter for every need-tending to three meals a day, paying the bills, assisting the church schoolchildren with their play, and other things that pit incredible demands on her time. She struggles to convince her father to help her by selling off some trinkets so as to pay off certain debts, but he steadfastly refuses. And she faces other worries from a local playboy who tried to seduce her. Soon enough she falls asleep late at night stressed and overdue with work. Before she knows it she is lying on a street in dirty clothes without any memory of where she is or how she got there. From here the tale takes a different direction entirely, with Dorothy struggling to survive as a migrant worker and then as an abused schoolmistress. She suffers the pangs of poverty, and sees what it is truly like for the first time. She learns to pick herself up and adapt to the circumstances, and benefits from her middle class accent and connections to distant but rich relatives. All of this changes Dorothy, who was an obedient but prudent young woman just trying to do right by her father. She learns how hard life is for some, and what it takes to truly survive. In the end she loses her religion, which disconcerts her. But she feels no connection to God after this experience, and struggles to say a meaningful prayer. Dorothy is finally rescued by Mr. Warburton, the local playboy who finds her in hiding and asks her hand in marriage. She returns to her father and to the town where she lived, and falls back in to the daily rhythms of life. The bills start to pile up again, and demands on Dorothy's time begin again to grow. She doesn't avoid this life; she fully accepts it, despite the demands on her and the incredible challenges she has just been through. But Dorothy wants normalcy and predictability in her life, which is what we all want. She forgets the poverty she saw, but then again this makes her life easier.This third effort by George Orwell is an improvement over his previous novel, Burmese Days, which tried too hard to tell a story. A Clergyman's Daughter again focuses on a single character who struggles with the society around her. It is through her eyes that we see the struggles of poverty, of getting a good education, of social class, of religion, and of a woman's role. Many of these experiences reflect George Orwells's view of how the world operates and reflect his own personal experiences.I liked this book for its simplicity, although Dorothy was not someone I closely identified with. I felt sorry for her, but disappointed that she didn't change her lifestyle after all she had been through. She was an interesting character, but not one too cheer for in the end.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very funny, heartwarming, sad novel about the tribulations of the title character. This has much to say about the mores and attitudes of 1930s small town life. Brilliant stuff.