George Orwell bibliography and Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1968–1970. Peter Davison of De Montfort University spent 17 years researching and correcting the entirety of Orwell's works with Angus and Sheila Davison, and devoted the last eleven volumes of the twenty-volume series "The Complete Works of George Orwell" to essays, letters, and journal entries. The entire series was initially printed by Secker and Warburg in 1986, finished by Random House in 1998, and revised between 2000 and 2002. Starting with "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941), several of Orwell's longer essays took the form of pamphlets: Orwell was not widely known for writing verse,
George Orwell until he had seen the situation "in situ", Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barcelona. Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with Henry Miller in Paris on the way. The American writer told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was "sheer stupidity" and that the Englishman's ideas "about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney." A few days later in Barcelona, Orwell met John McNair of the Independent Labour Party