• George Orwell's first book tackles themes of social injustice, prejudice, and class discrimination that speak as loudly to a modern audience as they did to the original readership of 1933.
• Published within the world-renowned Oxford World's Classics series, this new edition of the text re-evaluates traditional interpretations of the work and the importance of its genre and style.
• The Oxford World's Classics edition is distinct in providing an accessible and authoritative introduction, explanatory notes, select bibliography, a chronology of Orwell's life and work, and a note on the textual edition.

   
"Poverty is what I am writing about".
  
In the late 1920s, Eric Blair resigned his post as a colonial policeman in Burma, immersed himself in the slums of Paris and London, and reinvented himself as George Orwell, one of the most revered prose stylists in the English language. Orwell decided to write about the lives of the poor - the dishwashers of Paris, the tramps of London - not by imagining poverty, but by experiencing poverty. The result is a book which is as provocative and incisive about class inequalities, homelessness, and social prejudices today as it was when it was first published in 1933.
  
Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell's first book, and it remains a masterpiece of prose writing. This edition is accompanied by an introduction which examines Orwell's book for its literary, social, and political significance.