Reilly 262.



Published by EDITIONS POETRY LONDON, hardback with D/J, small size, D/W with minor edge wear, corners bumped, faded, wear to edges, slight foxing, wear to head & tail of spine, faded title on spine.


Born in British Columbia, Paul Potts (1911-1990) lived most of his life based in Londons Soho district, a friend and confidant of many ultimately famous writers. His circle included Dylan Thomas and T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Smart and Sean OCaseyand of course George Orwell, a constant friend. George Orwells Friend includes autobiography and poetry, an intimate portrait of George Orwell, and the classic anguished memoir of love and vulnerabilityelements that rarely find words, and even more rarely find the words of a man. Along with Potts intimate essay about George Orwell, Don Quixote on a Bicycle, editor Ronald Caplan reclaims the thoughtful work of a passionate, unusual Canadian.

Potts was born in British Columbia but spent much of his life in England, living among characters in London’s Soho and Fitzrovia, moving among the elite literati and selling his poems on “penny each” broadsides, an act he considered a “sacrament.” He was a man of rare attentions, brave and tender, who wrote unfashionably in his time: a kind of straightforward poetry and prose about love, human kindness, decency, hope for the species, and peace. He was a friend of orwell


in orwell, wintry conscience of a generation p 231

The desperately poor, half-starved Canadian Paul Potts—who printed and sold his own poems in pubs—painted an idealized picture of high-tea with Orwell on a ...