A Clergyman’s Daughter

Twenty-eight-year-old Dorothy Hare leads a life of drudgery and self-abnegation in the house of her father, the rector of Knype Hill, helping him stave off his creditors and making costumes for fund-raising events. When, after being invited to dinner by Mr Warburton, a local atheist and libertine, she is glimpsed in his arms by the village gossip, Mrs Semprill, Dorothy suffers a breakdown and, struck by amnesia, embarks on journey that will see her join a group of vagrants, pick hops in the fields of Kent, stay in a hotel for “working girls” and sleep rough on the streets of London.

Perhaps the most experimental among his writings, A Clergyman’s Daughter, first published in 1935, is Orwell’s second work of fiction – and one that, in its depiction of a protagonist who rebels against and is ultimately vanquished by the society that oppresses her, is a clear prefiguration of later novels such as Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A Clergyman’s Daughter is part of Alma George Orwell Collection which includes Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Homage to Catalonia, Burmese Days and Coming Up for Air.

Alma Classics is committed to making available a wide range of literature from around the globe. Most of the titles are enriched by an extensive critical apparatus, notes and extra reading material, as well as a selection of photographs. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition and edited using a fresh, accessible editorial approach. With an emphasis on production, editorial and typographical values, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading classics.

About the Author

Eric Blair (1903–50), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was a novelist, journalist and critic, best remembered for his seminal novels 1984 and Animal Farm, and for works of non-fiction such as The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.