The Road to Wigan Pier - Definition and Overview

The Road to Wigan Pier was written by George Orwell and published in 1937. It is a sociological look at living conditions in the industrial north of England before World War II.

The name of the book comes from a music hall routine by a British comedian. Although a pier is a structure built out into the water from the shore, in Britain the term has the connotation of a seaside holiday, something that it lacks in the US, where "boardwalk" takes this connotation. Wigan was a small, grimy coal town on a river which was accessed by some boats via an offloading structure, though it primarily used land transport. Hence the music-hall joke was that a coal town had its own seaside resort, and Orwell's selection of the phrase in his title was that socialism could improve work life to an unprecedented degree, even in a coal town.

See Also

• Pier

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Road to Wigan Pier

• The Road to Wigan Pier (http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/index.html) - Searchable, indexed etext.
• The Road to Wigan Pier (http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books/wiganpier.htm) Complete book with publication data and search feature.
• Orwell answers a question about Wigan Pier (http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/wiganpier-bbc.htm) Excerpt from a broadcast of the BBC's Overseas Service.