Orwell’s letter may sell for 15K
Boston: A three- page letter, written by the English novelist George Orwell while recovering from tuberculosis, is expected to fetch $ 15,000 at an auction in the US.
Signed “George,” the letter dated March 8, 1948, was written to novelist Anthony Powell, while Orwell was admitted to the Hairmyres Hospital in Scotland.
He describes his reviewing work for the Times
Literary Supplement and reports on improved health having embarked on a course of streptomycin.
“I’m doing another book for the TLS ( a rather dreadful anthology of recent American stuff called Spearhead). I didn’t suppose they’d send me the Mark Twain book. ( By the way, after many years of trying I have at last got hold of a very rare book, Van Wyck Brooks’s The Tragedy of Mark Twain, which he afterwards called in & reissued in a garbled version.),” he wrote in the letter. While working on the iconic novel Nine teen EightyFour, Or well became the first patient to receive streptomycin in Scotland. “I am a lot better. I am having a drug called treptomycin, which is a novelty in this country but is thought to be very good. It appears to be doing its stuff, though it’s too early for them to say for certain,” Orwell wrote.
Although his health at first showed improvement, he suffered severe side effects and the treatment had to be suspended after fifty days, according to US- based RR Auction.
“I’ve arranged to bring out my uniform edition at the rate of a volume a year, & at present I have got six books to go in it, as I have suppressed several,” he wrote.