Orwell, Poland and Polish Exiles in Paris and London

While the official publishing market in communist Poland would condemn Orwell to being an ‘unperson’ for almost forty years after his death, Orwell’s outspoken political views, in particular his fierce opposition towards Stalin’s politics and sympathy for Poland, turned him into one of the most appreciated representatives of the British left within Polish communities scattered around the globe by the Second World War and their country’s subsequent Soviet occupation. Polish exiles would not only mention him frequently in the Polish press and collaborate internationally on translating and publishing his works abroad, but would also be his friends and first-hand sources of information. Drawing on primary material, including Orwell’s letters to Teresa Jeleńska deemed lost by Orwell scholars, the paper discusses Orwell’s attitude to Polish problems as well as aspects of Orwell’s early Polish reception and relationships with Poles in Paris and London. In doing so, it attempts to bring new insights not only to Orwell studies, but also to how we think about the reception of writers generally in times of censorship.