Introduction

George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" begins as a report on life in the depressed coal and industrial region of Northern England and expands into an ambivalent critique of socialism and progress. It's a book that belongs to its era – which saw the Great Depression, the peak of industrialism in the capitalist core countries, the rise of both communist and fascist challenges to the interwar liberal order – but also speaks in interesting ways to ours. Angela Nagle returns to Outsider Theory for an appreciative discussion of Orwell's book and its relationship to her longstanding interests.

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