Down and Out in Paris and London: Macmillan Collector's Library

Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell's first published book. It is at once a very personal account, and a vivid expose of hard lives weighed down by poverty in France and England between the wars.

Towards the end of the 1920s, whilst living in Paris, George Orwell's few remaining funds are stolen and he quickly falls into a life of severe poverty. Living hand to mouth, he shares squalid lodgings with Russian-born Boris and finds tedious and back-breaking work washing up in the bowels of Paris restaurant kitchens. On his return to England, he lives as a tramp, finding occasional shelter in often dangerous doss houses.