First appearing in 1949, the novel 1984 seemed like a nightmarish vision of the future in a totalitarian world. Playing on the public's worst fears about governmental control, different readings saw the former Soviet Union as the object of satire, while others focused on increasingly powerful democratic governments.

The title, George Orwell's 1984, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on George Orwell's 1984 through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on George Orwell, a chronology of the author's life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.