Inscribed by George Orwell to the bookseller whose Hampstead shop, Booklovers’ Corner, was for a time his workplace and home, a 1936 first of his third novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, made a record £18,000 at Bonhams on March 1.
Orwell, feeling intellectually isolated in his parents’ home town of Southwold on the Suffolk coast, had longed to return to London. His aunt, Nellie Limouzin, persuaded her friends Francis and Myfanwy Westhope to provide him with lodgings over their shop in exchange for part-time help.
The Westhopes introduced Orwell to the form of socialism that shaped his future political views, but he did not share their passion for Esperanto as the language of the impending proletarian revolution.