In this pioneering work about the precursor to the comic book, Kelly Boyd traces the evolution of the boys' story paper and its impact on the imaginative world of working-class readers. From the penny dreadful and the Boy's Own Paper to the tales of Billy Bunter and Sexton Blake, this cultural form shaped ideas about gender, race, class and empire in response to social change. This study is an important analysis of a neglected part of popular culture.

This Collected Works contain: Nineteen Eigthy-Four (1984), A Clergyman's Daughter, Animal Farm, Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, Inside the Whale and other Essays, Down the Mine, England Your England, Shooting an Elephant, Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels, Politics and the English Language, The Prevention of Literature, Boys' Weeklies, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Why I Write, Writers and Leviathan, Poetry and the Microphone, The Spike, A Hanging, Bookshop Memories, Charles Dickens, Boys' Weeklies, My Country Right or Left, Looking Back on the Spanish War, In Defence of English Cooking, Good Bad Books, The Sporting Spirit, Nonsense Poetry, The Prevention of Literature, Books v. Cigarettes, Decline of the English Murder, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, Confessions of a Book Reviewer, Politics v. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels, How the Poor Die, Such, Such Were the Joys, Reflections on Gandhi, Politics and the English Language, The Lion and the Unicorn, The Road to Wigan Pier. Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Two Minutes Hate", "Room 101", "memory hole", "Newspeak", "doublethink", "proles", "unperson", and "thoughtcrime".