Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four 
George Orwell 
London: Secker & Warburg, 1949 
Vanderbilt University Collection 
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel about a totalitarian state—Oceania—that suppresses individuality, rewrites historical records to fit the ruling party’s political agenda, and monitors all aspects of its citizen’s lives through constant surveillance. Concepts in Orwell’s narrative—“Big Brother,” “thoughtcrime” and “Thought Police”—have endured as terms used to describe real-world political and social control structures.