A Clergyman’s Daughter

Orwell’s second novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter, ostensibly follows the eponymous Dorothy Hare as an attack of amnesia takes her into poverty, a police cell and employment at a school for girls. But many of the episodes – the homeless night on Trafalgar Square, hop-picking, school-teaching – are also thinly disguised reportage of Orwell’s own experiences.