A review by sarah_dietrich
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

3.0

George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier is one of his three non-fiction books. The first half is an account of Orwell's time spent in Northern England mining towns, seeing how people live & work. The writing here is very similar to Down and Out in Paris and London - the people Orwell writes about are working in awful conditions and struggling with long-term poverty. The second half of the book is Orwell's analysis of what must be done to remedy the awful conditions the lower classes are trapped in. This read quite similarly to some of Orwell's essays & he advocates strongly for a socialist solution. Overall, an interesting study of the challenges faced by mining communities in 1930's England.

Not one of my favourites of Orwell's work - I prefer Down and Out in Paris and London to the first half, and prefer Orwell's essays to the second half.