First edition of Orwell’s 1984 sells for nearly £2000

As controversy rages on about Government invasion of our privacy and programmes to monitor our Internet and mobile phone activity, two first editions of George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the classic novel about a dystopian surveillance state, have just sold for impressive sums.

The books were sold on the AbeBooks online platform this week. A company spokesperson shared a bit of history about price ranges for this iconic novel…

 “A first edition, first printing in a green dust jacket sold for $3,000 (about £1,913) and a first edition, first printing in the red dust jacket sold for $2,845 (about £1,814). It is uncertain whether the green or red version came first, so it’s common to see both books listed as the true first edition. The book was published in 1949 by Secker and Warburg and, of course, is one of the most important novels of the 20th century. In April of this year, the AbeBooks site sold another first edition (in a red dust jacket) of the book for $10,000 (£6,438) – easily the most expensive copy of Orwell’s masterpiece that we have ever sold.”