Coming Up for Air is a novel by George Orwell, first published in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It combines premonitions of the impending war with images of an idyllic Thames-side Edwardian era childhood. The novel is pessimistic, with its view that commercialism and capitalism are killing the best of rural England, "everything cemented over", and there are great new external threats. As a child, Orwell lived at Shiplake and Henley in the Thames Valley. He was the son of an Indian Civil Servant who was still in India, and he lived a genteel life with his mother and... two sisters, though spending much of the year at boarding school at Eastbourne and later at Eton. He particularly enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits with a neighbouring family. In 1937 Orwell spent some months fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat in May 1937, by a Fascist sniper at Huesca. Orwell was severely ill in 1938 and was advised to spend the winter in a warm climate. The novelist L.H.
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| Author: | George Orwell |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year published: | 1939 |
| Number of editions: | 13 |