Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell, George - 1949

London: Secker & Warburg, 1949 First edition, first printing. Publisher's light green cloth, red lettering to spine, top edge stained red; in the original red dust jacket designed by Michael Kennard, lettered in white. Very good book, with light toning to spine and board edges, a few small spots of discoloration and a touch of spotting to rear board, light foxing to endpapers and text block edges, and very slight creasing to bottom corners of a handful of pages at rear; good or better unclipped dust jacket, with heavy toning to spine, light rubbing to front panel, light soiling to rear panel, shallow chipping to spine ends, vertical split to top of rear spine fold, some chipping to top of rear panel, some edgewear that includes a few small closed tears, light creasing to bottom of front panel, and lightly nicked corners. Overall, a pleasing and unrestored example of the scarce original dust jacket. Fenwick A.12a. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel about a dystopian future in the year 1984. In the future Orwell has created, the totalitarian government controls the civilian population with a detailed system of mental and physical control, including omnipresent two-way TV screens that keep the citizens under constant surveillance. Any criticism of the government is strictly illegal, and independent thought is persecuted as a "thoughtcrime." Even the newly adopted language, "newspeak," which abbreviates many phrases and eliminates words deemed inessential, serves "not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view" of the new totalitarian regime, but also "to make all other modes of thought impossible…. that is, a thought diverging from the [state approved] principles…should literally be unthinkable, in so far as though is dependent on words." This first British edition was published five days before the first American edition. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Dust Jacket Included.