'Down and Out in Paris and London' by George Orwell

March 2024 - 'Down and Out in Paris and London' by George Orwell

At our March meeting we discussed George Orwell’s memoir 'Down and Out in Paris and London' which was first published in 1933.

This is a book that has been categorised in numerous different ways – as a piece of social realism, as reportage, as autobiography, and as fiction. The book is split into two with the first half centred on Orwell’s experiences as a plongeur in Paris. The second is based “on the tramp” in London and the Home Counties.

While the group were sensitive to some of the weaknesses in the work’s structure, readers preferred the French section of the narrative, where Orwell experiences low-paid life in Paris in glorious squalor amongst a cast of larger-than-life characters. As a group, we revelled in the theatrical description of the hotel kitchens which reminded us of the novels of Zola, and the intensity of the experience of hunger and fatigue.

The “London” half of the novel has a very different tone, and Orwell did write them as two separate pieces of writing. Some of our readers felt that this section felt more didactic and repetitive. The figure of Bozo is a bright spot amongst the gloom, a man trapped by poverty who is free in his mind and who teaches Orwell to look at the night sky.

Casual Wards

Orwell is sympathetic towards the men he meets between casual wards, though he isn’t sentimental. He gives them agency – and insists that they should not have to express their gratitude to those offering them charity. He asks us to consider the value of life and the waste that unemployment creates. It was noted that Orwell is interested in cataloguing the experience of those “on the tramp” in a way that reminded readers of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor.

Collections at The London Archives

As part of the session we looked at archival sources relating to the casual wards of London’s workhouses. You can find photographs from the 1930s on the London Picture Archive which demonstrate the conditions Orwell experienced; use the search terms “casual wards”.