George Orwell's Diaries Turned Into a Blog

Posted on August 27, 2008

The diaries of George Orwell are being published every day in blog form at orwelldiaries.wordpress.com. The only difference is that 70 years have been added to the date. What happened on August 26, 1938 is published as a blog post on August 26th, 2008. The New York Times has an article about the new blog which is being administered by a University of Westminster professor.

"I think he would have been a blogger," said Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London who administers the Orwell writing prize and thought up the idea of the blog.
Though as prolific as any blogger (his collected writings occupy some 20 volumes), Orwell, who died in 1950, never had the chance to spontaneously publish his thoughts to a waiting public. Now - with some lag time - they are being made available that way at orwelldiaries.wordpress.com.
The Webmaster has included hyperlinks, including a definition of blackberries (no, not the kind you operate with your thumbs) and a Google map of the sanitorium in Kent in southeast England where Orwell was recuperating from tuberculosis and observing the weather so closely.
The entry from Aug. 10, for instance, is offers this report: "Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon."

It's a very cool idea. More historical diaries should be published online this way.