| Inside the Whale | |
| Author: | George Orwell |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Victor Gollancz Ltd. |
| Release Date: | 11 March 1940 |
| Pages: | 188 |
| Preceded By: | Coming Up for Air |
| Followed By: | Animal Farm |
Inside the Whale and Other Essays is a book of essays written by George Orwell in 1940. It includes the eponymous essay "Inside the Whale".
Inside the Whale was published by Victor Gollancz as a book of essays on 11 March 1940. Orwell refers to it as a "book" in part three of the essay. ("While I have been writing this book another European war has broken out."), as well as in letters he wrote to Geoffrey Gorer and Humphry House, an English scholar, the following month.[1] Gollancz initially printed 1,100 copies in March 1940, with some copies destroyed by Nazi bombing of England.
A collection of essays with the same title was published in 1962 in the UK by Penguin Books.[2] This edition was a reprint of an earlier collection entitled Selected Essays published in 1957. The collection contains the following essays:
The back cover of the 1962 edition notes that the front cover is a photograph of a selection of books from George Orwell's personal library. These are
kept upright by a black elephant bookend.