Orwell wrote in a letter to George Woodcock dated 28 September 1946 that "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" was one of the two or three of his books that he was ashamed of because it "was written simply as an exercise and I oughtn't to have published it, but I was desperate for money. At that time I simply hadn't a book in me, but I was half starved and had to turn out something to bring in £100 or so." Like "A Clergyman's Daughter", Orwell did not want the book reprinted during his lifetime. Orwell's biographer Jeffrey Meyers found the novel flawed by weaknesses in plot, style and characterisation, but praised "a poignant and moving quality that comes from Orwell's perceptive portrayal of the alienation and loneliness of poverty, and from Rosemary's tender response to Gordon's mean misery". The novel has won other admirers besides Mailer, notably Lionel Trilling, who called it "a "summa" of all the criticisms of a commercial civilization that have ever been made".