Animal Farm Paperback - 1996

Summary

First line

MR JONES, of the Manor farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.

From the rear cover

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they embark on the creation of a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned -- a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published fifty years ago, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner; the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

First Edition Identification

Secker and Warburg first published Animal Farm in London in 1945. With a print run of just 4,000 copies, the first edition is bound in green cloth and states “First Published May 1945” on the copyright page. The original green and grey dust jacket is famously fragile as it was cheaply produced to meet Wartime Economy Standards.