# Down and Out in Paris and London

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/9780141393032

![Down and Out in Paris and London](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london_978-01-4139-303-2.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2017%3A45%3A22)

- Book: [Down and Out in Paris and London](https://www.bookquiver.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london) ([Down and Out in Paris and London.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london.md))
- Authors: [George Orwell](https://www.bookquiver.com/george-orwell)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4139-303-2
- Pages: 224
- Published: 2013-01-03
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society. 'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time - and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.