T S Eliot & Animal Farm

T S Eliot (Left) and Fellow Faber & Faber Directors Photographed in 1948

George Orwell was a great admirer of T S Eliot, and the admiration was apparently reciprocated. It is perplexing therefore, to find that Orwell submitted the manuscript of Animal Farm to Eliot at Faber and Faber anticipating a favourable response, only for it to be rejected. As D J Taylor writes in his excellent biography of Orwell: “Eliot himself was doubtful of the novel’s merits. It was a distinguished piece of writing, he conceded, but he doubted ‘that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time.'”

Eliot, known as ‘The Pope of Russell Square’ was at Faber and Faber for many years, during which time he became one of the most influential figures in the London publishing world, particularly in his support of young poets. However, despite his reputation as a ‘safe pair of hands’, he occasionally made mistakes, and rejecting Animal Farm must count as one of his worst.

It took Orwell almost a year to get Animal Farm published, which must have subjected him to stress that he could have done without. London was undergoing V1, and latterly, V2 bombing, and Orwell and his wife, Eileen, were bombed out of their flat in late 1944. His poor health was always a problem, but Eileen was also suffering from the illness that would eventually lead to her death in 1945. In addition to all that, even when a publisher was found (Secker & Warburg), wartime shortages meant that there was little paper available for non essential publishing. All in all this puts my own futile attempts to get published firmly into context, but we all struggle to a greater or lesser degree, I suppose.