![]() ![]() Perhaps owing to its name almost made up to be satirized, it was already a joke by the 1930s: The comedienne Gracie Fields recorded a music-hall song called “ Biggest Aspidistra in the World.” Because of its virtual indestructibility, it is also known as the barroom plant, the iron plant, or the cast-iron plant. The aspidistra is a hardy, long-lived houseplant popular in the heavily curtained oil- and gas-lit Victorian era and still common in middle-class homes in Orwell’s time. Not familiar with aspidistra? I wasn’t either. ![]() There is such a character, Philip Ravelston, modeled on him in Aspidistra, and other clearly autobiographical references abound in the novel as well. He also had published in The Adelphi, a left-wing journal edited by a wealthy magnanimous baronet, Orwell being one of his protégés. By that time Orwell had already published two other novels, Burmese Days and A Clergyman’s Daughter. His proletarian novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, written in 1934-35, was published in April 1936 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. We cannot allow the name of George Orwell to be known only in connection with the fictional works Animal Farm and 1984, or with Homage to Catalonia. ![]()
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