Famous British novelist George Orwell is the latest author to join Substack after Salman Rushdie and George Saunders, The Orwell Foundation has announced.
Dubbed Orwell Daily, the project will serialise Orwell’s work. “Subscribers to the newsletter will receive around 1,000 to 1,500 words of the book each day. The extracts are led by the original chapters, although some longer chapters will be paused at the least intrusive moment,” said Jeremy Wikeley, editor of the Orwell Daily.
According to Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, previous dramatisations of Down and Out in Paris and London and Nineteen Eighty-Four showed that “Orwell’s books often fall into perfect snippets – each wholly formed”.
Orwell Daily will have both free and paid options. It will commence on November 4 with the writer’s memoir Down and Out in Paris and London which was published in 1933.
The emails have been described as “a five-to-10 minute ‘coffee break’ read” on Substack. The Orwell Foundation estimates that it will take around 50 days to get through the first book, with the second serialisation to be announced just before Down and Out in Paris and London is finished.
Also Read: TikTok Has Failed to Curb Misinformation, Report Shows
Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, said previous dramatisations of Down and Out in Paris and London and Nineteen Eighty-Four showed that “Orwell’s books often fall into perfect snippets – each wholly formed”.
“One of the things we’ve seen with other recent serialisations on Substack is that the format enables people to read alongside each other and to start conversations about the books, whether that’s with friends or through the app and social media,” Jean added. “It is a kind of book club, with the convenience of it coming straight into your inbox. We also want to get people reading and discussing the books themselves rather than Orwell, the pasted-on cultural reference point. We want to show how much more there is to him as a writer.”
As the Guardian notes, the serialisation will coincide with the launch of a new writing prize from the Orwell Foundation. The prize for reporting homelessness, in partnership with the Centre for Homelessness Impact, joins the foundation’s other prizes, for political fiction, political writing, journalism and the prize for exposing Britain’s social evils.
