My name is Lily Sears, and I am a first year Philosophy student now transitioning into my second year! Being a Philosophy student, working with the English Literature professor Dr Nathan Waddell and other interns who were also English Literature students on the project “Rethinking George Orwell: New Letters by a Major Author” presented its challenges as it was an area of research that I was not already familiar with through my degree. However, due to the philosophical ideas George Orwell contributed to the world, especially with his famous works “Animal Farm” and “1984,” I was extremely intrigued in the project and delighted to have been chosen to work on it this summer. What I didn’t expect from the project, going into it with this attitude, was how much I was going to learn from it, and how much it would alter my perspective on George Orwell going forward.
The first portion of the project was to transcribe Orwell’s handwritten letters into coherent pieces of text that could be easily read and understood. This meant transcribing each word Orwell had written exactly, making sure to capture any quirks he would use in his writing, such as using “v.” to mean very, or an ampersand in the place of “and.” Although this would occasionally strain my eyes, it was very interesting work, and through the style of Orwell’s letters, I came to learn more about what he may really have been like to know as an ordinary person, and not the sensationalised thinker that I had previously known him to be, which subverted my original expectations for what the project would be.
The second portion of the project was to then take the newly transcribed letters we had completed and edit and annotate any references contained within them that would not be immediately obvious to the average reader. This would help provide the context and details necessary to understand, for example, why he was making a certain reference, and what the reference meant. References he made could range from details about his life to the colloquial language used at the time to socio-political references during his lifetime. Through this work, I developed a new appreciation for the work of editors because, as a reader, I would rarely utilise the annotations on a book I was reading, but this project helped to make me realise just how important the information contained in such annotations is, and just how thorough the research conducted to complete them must be.
As a result of these experiences and new skills learnt, as well as important realisations about the world of academic research and literary editing, I am extremely satisfied with my experience of the Collaborative Research Internship, and very grateful for the opportunity to have taken part in a project that I found so enlightening. I would therefore recommend the project to anyone looking to learn more about academic research and have the opportunity to experience such pursuits.
Lily Sears, BA Philosophy