From: bridegam@pacbell.net   
      
   Joe Fineman wrote:   
   > Martha Bridegam  writes:   
   >   
   >   
   >>Joe Fineman wrote:   
   >>   
   >>>I have gotten around to looking up Orwell's complete works at the   
   >>>library.  The first nine volumes are merely definitive editions of   
   >>>his books, which I have already read, but the remaining eleven are   
   >>>an attempt to print everything else he ever wrote, and so   
   >>>constitute an expansion of the four volumes that I bought 40 years   
   >>>ago & have read to a frazzle.  In Vol. 10 is a letter in which   
   >>>Orwell describes taking a walk in a nearby cemetery, Kensal Rise,   
   >>>to get into a gloomy mood for writing, but finding the epitaphs   
   >>>hilariously counterproductive.  A footnote explains that Kensal   
   >>>Rise is "an error for Kensall Green".  I thought that an unlikely   
   >>>error for a neighbor to make, and a likely one for an Englishman to   
   >>>suspect (Kensall Green being a very well-known 19th-century London   
   >>>cemetery & a stock literary allusion to death).  Sure enough,   
   >>>Google instantly reveals that there is also Kensal Rise Cemetery,   
   >>>not far away.  Google does *not* reveal a Web site or email address   
   >>>to which addenda & corrigenda for this monumental work may be   
   >>>addressed.   
   >>   
   >>You might try writing Professor Davison in care of Random House UK.   
   >   
   >   
   > Not worth it for such a trivial correction (tho it might at least give   
   > him the pleasure of pointing out that I misspelled "Kensal Green"   
   > twice).  If there had been a Web site, I could have done the job in a   
   > minute.   
   >   
   > I once did write a letter to Bernard Crick pointing out a couple of   
   > substantial errors (one of them grotesque) in his biography of   
   > Orwell.  It was not acknowledged.   
      
   The one I want to tell someone about is a footnote to Fred Warburg's   
   comment on the publishing merits of *1984*. He suggests at one point   
   that Orwell is talking on behalf of "the Boxers of this world." The   
   footnote calls this a reference to the Boxer Rebellion. That's stupid.   
   Orwell never took the slightest interest in China. On the other hand, he   
   had recently written a story involving a heroic, hard-working horse   
   named Boxer that Secker & Warburg had published. There are some indexing   
   errors in the first edition of the CW too and I don't know if anyone's   
   bothered to correct them.   
      
   /M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)