부산대학교 도서관

This paper investigates a particular aspect of the relationship between George Orwell and Raymond Williams that has not received much attention in previous studies. Most research has exclusively focused on the Orwell's influences on Williams without paying attention to the rare occasions when the former arguably responded to what the latter wrote. Williams was one of three editors of Politics and Letters, a short-lived quarterly review published in 1947-48. Orwell contributed an essay titled "Writers and Leviathan" for the fourth-and the last, as it transpired-number in 1948. It was intended as a commentary on the earlier essays of the "Critic and Leviathan" series. Reviewing the line-up of the series-the keynote essay by R. O. C. Winkler, a Leavisite, followed by "A Commentary" of Christopher Hill, a Marxist historian, "Literary Criticism and Politics" by F. R. Leavis, "David and Goliath" by Lionel Elvin, an active member of the Labour Party, and concluding with Orwell's "Writers and Leviathan" -it can be seen that the selection of contributors reflects the editors' intentions to spark debates, mainly between the Leavisite English school and the Marxist intellectuals, with the unorthodox writer Orwell acting as anchor, so the editors could facilitate destroying the "barricades" dividing "politics" and "letters." In the preparatory notes for "Writers and Leviathan," Orwell writes, "Note (against R. W.) [that] important thing is not tying literature down to a low level but implied command to tell lies." Here, the initials "R. W." probably refer to Raymond Williams, who had contributed his first full-scale essay, "The Soviet Literary Controversy in Retrospect," to the first number of Politics and Letters. It might be possible, then, to suppose that Orwell addressed his essay to Williams as a critical response to the latter's essay.