George Orwell, who died in 1950, has become the latest author to join Substack, following Salman Rushdie and George Saunders.
According to a Guardian UK report, the Orwell Foundation is set to launch Orwell Daily, which will serialise Orwell’s work via the email subscription platform.
Orwell Daily started on October 28 with the writer’s memoir Down and Out in Paris and London. Published in 1933, this was Orwell’s first published full-length work. It begins in Paris, where Orwell worked as a dishwasher at Hotel X, and then moves to London where the author comments on everything from diet to language.
Subscribers to the newsletter will receive around 1,000 to 1,500 words of the book each day. The extracts are led by the original chapters, although some longer chapters will be “paused at the least intrusive moment,” said Jeremy Wikeley, editor of the Orwell Daily.
The emails are described as “a five-to-10 minute ‘coffee break’ read” on Substack. It is estimated it will take around 50 days to get through the first book, with the second serialisation to be announced just before Down and Out in Paris and London is finished.
Orwell Daily is free, but there is also a paid option which will allow subscribers to join a community and comment on each post.
Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, said previous dramatisations of Down and Out in Paris and London and Nineteen Eighty-Four showed that “Orwell’s books often fall into perfect snippets – each wholly formed”.
