Why I Write

George Orwell set out to make political writing into an art, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwells essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In The Prevention of Literature, the third in the Orwells Essays series, Orwell considers the freedom of thought and expression. He discusses the effect of the ownership of the press on the accuracy of reports of events, and takes aim at political language, which consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together. The Prevention of Literature is a stirring cry for freedom from censorship, which Orwell says must start with the writer themselves: To write in plain vigorous language one has to think fearlessly.