This Week in Book History

Newspeak, doublethink and Big Brother entered the English lexicon on June 6th, 1949. George Orwell's chillingly believable work of a future dystopian world, 1984, was published first on that date. As for the date of the title, Orwell wasn't trying to prophesize: in need of a title, Orwell reversed the last two numbers of 1948, the year in which he wrote the bulk of the novel.

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