From: joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   I have just finished a leisurely reading of Orwell's Collected Works,   
   a volume at a time (by virtue of having survived Harvard for 3 months   
   in 1959, I count as an alumnus, which allows me to buy a library   
   card).  Any such compilation ought to have a Web site, or at least an   
   email address, for errata (and ought to be available on a CD-ROM), but   
   no.  Perhaps this venue will suffice to put on record the following   
   howlers in the editing:   
      
   1.  Vol. X, p. 236:  O. says that he took a walk in Kensal Rise   
       cemetery to get himself in a suitably gloomy mood for his current   
       job, but found the exercise (as we would say) counterproductive in   
       that the epitaphs were hilarious.  A note says that Kensal Rise is   
       "an error for Kensal Green" & cites Chesterton's "Rolling English   
       Road".  That is a natural error for an Englishman to suspect, in   
       that Kensal Green is a very well-known cemetery & a stock English   
       literary allusion to death (O. has Comstock use it, IIRC, in   
       _Coming Up for Air_).  But it is an unlikely error for a local   
       resident to make, and a glance at Google shows that there is a   
       nearby neighborhood called Kensal Rise, and it has its own   
       cemetery.   
      
   2.  Vol. XIX, p. 481:  In Fredric Warburg's report on _Nineteen   
       Eighty-Four_, he refers to the proles as "the Boxers of `1984'".   
       An editorial note says, desperately, "Presumably refers to the   
       Boxers of the Boxer Rebellion against Western infiltration into   
       China, 1899-1900...".  I presume that it means that the proles   
       played the role in _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ that Boxer played in   
       _Animal Farm_.  That is not exactly true, but it is at least   
       intelligible.   
      
   3.  Vol. XX, p. 230, in "Errata in HOMAGE TO CATALONIA":   
      
         _Last page_.  Contains the phrase "under your brun".   
         Unnecessary obscenity which might be altered to "underneath   
         you".   
      
       The error ("brun" for "bum") is not flagged as such, so it is   
       probably the editors'.   
      
       Obscenity, my ***!  I'm glad to say the change was not made.  Oddly, I   
       remembered the passage right off.  From my paperback copy, 1955,   
       bought that year when I was a sophomore:   
      
           And then England -- southern England, probably the sleekest   
         landscape in the world.  It is difficult when you pass that way,   
         especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness   
         with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum,   
         to believe that anything is really happening anywhere....   
   --   
   ---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   ||:  It is most rewarding to pay attention to the parts you like  :||   
   ||:  best.                                                        :||   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)