The English People
By George Orwell
 
First edition, first impression, published by Collins under the general editorship of W. J. Turner.

Octavo. Original green paper-covered boards, printed and decorated in white to a design carried from the front board across the spine; original unclipped dust jacket repeating the board design, with the "Britain in Pictures" banner to the head of both flaps. With eight colour plates and seventeen black-and-white illustrations after paintings and drawings, including contributions from Henry Moore, Dame Laura Knight, William Dring and Feliks Topolski.

Near fine. Some of the usual offsetting to the endpapers, otherwise beautifully clean internally; a little rubbing to the bottom edge of the boards and to the spine ends.

Dust jacket near fine. A very small nick to the bottom corner of the lower panel, with some browning to the reverse of the flaps and a few small and isolated instances of superficial rubbing.

Commissioned in September 1943 for Collins's Britain in Pictures series - a project conceived at the Ministry of Information - and written the following year, "The English People" was delayed by wartime paper shortages and not published until August 1947. In it Orwell surveys English character, class and language, noting of the last that it has "a very large vocabulary and simplicity of grammar." He later dismissed the book as "silly" propaganda and refused to allow it to be reprinted in his lifetime. Among the plates is a colour illustration by Henry Moore, captioned "At the Pit Head" and credited to the Imperial War Museum - likely drawn from his 1942 series of coal-mining subjects.