What a great book! I actually am a lover of Paris and photography, and of course who can resist a dog, let alone two? I really hope the authors make this into a series, maybe London, Florence, Venice? The book reads like a childrens book, but the target audience does seem to be aimed at adults. Whomever reads this book, it's enjoyable and one of my favorites!

This book was a gift from a friend who knows our love for dogs and Paris. My wife had just returned from the city of lights to our four "children" when the book arrived. What a delightful remembrance of the city seen trhough the keen photographic eye of Michael Maylszko. The text is complementary to a fault. A truely seamless product.

This should be enjoyed by anyone who understands the mind of a dog or who has been to Paris. It will be especially pleasing to those who appreicate both

The dogs on their own are adorable, the words on their own are wonderful, the sights of Paris are beautiful - but put them all together in this lovely book and you get the dreamy package that is "Betty & Rita Go to Paris". Excellent work! I look forward to Betty & Rita's next adventure.

This guide, like others in the Cadogan's range is chock full of information, and not photos. If you are looking for maps (other than a Metro and RER railway map inside the back cover and the walking maps) and colour pictures you are advised to look elsewhere.

After opening chapters looking at 'Paris in a Weekend' ,practicalities, history, art and architecture and several short pieces on topics such as dog poo and modernism (well worth reading - very entertaining, but make sure your spectacles prescription is up to date - the print in this section is very small!), the guide really gets into its strength.

The bulk of the book is built around 11 different walks, in 11 different neighbourhoods. All are thoroughly described with an accompanying easy-to-follow black and white map. Each walk has an indication of how long it will take (excluding museum visits), suggestions for restaurants and cafes on the route and comprehensive information on the sites.

This makes the book perfect for a visitor spending an extended time in Paris, who wants to discover the city the best way possible, or for the repeat visitor who has the good fortune to be able to return to Paris time and again.

After the Walks, the museums of Paris are listed and cross-referenced to where they occur in the Walks text. The Louvre and Musee d'Orsay are described at length. A section then follows on peripheral attractions - lying further afield than central Paris. There are listings for restaurants, accommodation and nightlife venues.

The writing in Cadogans tends towards the opinionated, witty, slightly ironic (but not smart-alec) and drily understated British style. It appeals to me in the same way as Rough Guides do.

This is not a book for the first-time short-term visitor intending to see the "Top Five" and then move on. There are plenty of other guides catering to that market, and fulfilling their brief admirably (try Rick Steves, Let's Go, Frommer, Lonely Planet for example). But if you want a book with some substance and detail which will be just as rewarding a read back at your hotel as accompanying you on your on-foot rambles around this beautiful city, then I can't recommend it highly enough.

Opinionated, controversial, occasionally intolerant, sometimes jarringly critical, but always possessing at heart a deep affection for the city, this guide will point your gaze towards places people, places and events that may well be unknown to the majority of born and bred Parisians.

It is deeply learned, but never stuffy, memorably describing the decor of one church and "cold potatoes", the descriptions on the walks ensure that once you arrive at a given site, you are aware of its historical and architectural context.

Previous reviewers have referred to the guided walks in the book, and these are indeed its jewel. It will absolutely make so much more of your time in Paris than you could have believed possible if you make the effort to follow as many of them as you can. They are not arduous treks, they can be leisurely strolls and the book makes sure that you know the very best places to stop an eat (or drink) on the way.

Buy the book, read the history (also humourous, but quite bloody) on the way, use it whilst there, and relive your Parisian peregrinations on the way back by rereading the walks you had a chance to follow.

You will want to go back

The walking tours in this book are incredible. Fun, interesting, perfect directions (even for those of us who are directionally challenged!). The history, art, architecture sections are also well worth reading and opinionated just enough to make them truly interesting and unique. I plan on buying as many other travel books by this couple as I can find.

76 of the 123 pages are menu translations, French to English, and the vice versa so you can ask for what you want or translate what they have; all this very helpful and in a light, compact easy to carry book that makes it worth taking. The "Ten Simple Rules of Dining in Paris" in the begining along with the introduction comments are very good, they will serve you well to help make eating in Paris less stress free. The 25 pages of eating place recommendations is of less use, considering how many there are in Paris this is a very small sample. Near the Sacre-Coeur their recommeded cafe turned out to be a shabby affair with curious looking characters hunched over their rundown tables, which sat directly accross from a more relaxed less rundown place that we felt more comfortable eating at, which had fine food. You have to decide for yourself.
The book is worth taking with you. Paris is thick with places to eat, making it easier to just duck in anywhere with this wonderful little guide to manners and translation. Don't rely too much on the recommendations as the only places to eat at. It would have been nice if they had included a few paragraphs about the different types of wine.

This is the third time that I used this book while on vacation in Paris. I actually used the previous edition on my last two trips in 2000, and used this edition for my most recent trip in September 2001. The book is worth the money!

When I got to Paris, I made my way to some of my favorite restaurants and obviously started using the menus. This time, it was much easier to understand the selections. I remembered the definitions of a lot of the menu items from the previous two trips (using the book) and so understanding the menus and ordering the food was relatively painless this time. Yes, I actually improved my French vocabulary by using the book during my last two visits! The book is not exhaustive; however, I would say that at least 75% to 80% of the words on most restaurant menus are listed and defined.

I was so happy about my success with the menus that I decided to give some of the restaurant tips in the front of the book a try (pages 19-51). Now you have to understand that I never visit restaurants listed in guidebooks - EVER! I think that we tried three of the restaurants that were listed in the book and we really liked them. There weren't a lot of tourists in these restaurants and the food was pretty good.

I would like to make a comment about the best restaurants in Paris (page 29). Yes, it is very difficult to get a dinner reservation at these places -- I usually call about one month in advance. However, I almost always can get a lunch reservation at one of these restaurants without much difficulty. If you are dying to have dinner at a specific restaurant and you can't get a reservation, then try to have lunch there instead. I planned our last trip at the last minute and so I was not able to call restaurants ahead of time from the USA. When I arrived in Paris, I tried to call for dinner reservations and got the usual "complets" (full) on the other end of the line. Then I called and got a lunch reservation at L'Ambroisie with no problem! We waltzed in at about 1:00 pm, sat at a great table in a beautiful room and had a wonderful three-hour French lunch. The restaurant said that the lunch and dinner menus were the same (on that day) and so I did not feel that we had a lesser dining experience. This was confirmed when we were presented with the $300 check for lunch for two at the current exchange rate of 7FF/$1!

I highly recommend the book. It will save you a lot of time and trouble while using French menus. Also, you can try the restaurant recommendations and still feel as if you had an authentic French dining experience! I would also recommend their guidebook for Spanish-speaking countries.

I got this book as a gift. It has tips on restaurants, bistros and wine bars in Paris. The largest part of this book is a menu reader that explains what you are ordering on a menu in France. What a tough job these authors had! Exploring food markets and restaurants must be hard work. But seriously, this guide sends you to restaurants with good food and reasonable prices.

Michael Reynolds's Hemingway, The Paris Years is the second volume of his five volume life of Hemingway. Reynolds's takes pains in his introduction to thank and praise Carlos Baker for his Hemingway biography, but Reynolds's work has become acknowledged as the greater of the two. This volume deals with Hemingway's Paris years from 1921 to 1926, the same period that Hemingway describes in his short memoir, "A Moveable Feast."

The twenty-two year old Hemingway is newly married to his first wife Hadley and has been advised by his American literary mentor, Sherwood Anderson, to go live and work among the writers and artist of Paris' Left Bank expatriate pack.

Reynolds present Hemingway's Paris years in detailed chronological order. He occasionally goes into greater detail than is appropriate for good story telling but the book reads for the most part like a novel. Hemingway takes a trip to Italy to visit his WWI haunts in Milan and the riverbank where he was wounded. Hemingway's early work as a reporter for the Toronto Star takes him to some of the major political events of the 1920's. He interviews Mussolini mere months before he seizes power in Italy and attends a 1922 Genoa conference that is eerily similar to the 2001 Genoa conference. He takes exciting bullfighting trips to Spain wherein the development of Hemingway aficion for bullfighting is well described. The details of Hemingway's climb up the literary pecking order are made clear. He is being referred to as the best young American novelist by friendly critics years before he has published a novel.

The painstaking process by which Hemingway fashioned his early, classic short stories is described in you-are-there detail. The pugnacious Hemingway picks fights with perceived rivals, both with fisticuffs and with his writing. The long and difficult negotiation by which his first publisher, Boni and Liveright publish his first widely available book, "In Our Time," is well described. It seems that "In Our Time" was published almost more as a favor to Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway's other literary fans than on it's own commercial merit. Hemingway's dissatisfaction with Boni and Liveright's efforts for him is described as well as Fitzgerald's efforts to bring Hemingway to Scribner's. Hemingway writes the short satiric novella "The Torrents of Spring" to force Boni and Liveright to break their contract with him and then gives his first real novel, "The Sun Also Rises, " to Scribner's.

The book ends with Hemingway on his way home to Paris from New York in winter 1926. He has successfully broken his contract with his first publisher and signed a new contract with Scribner's.

I sometimes feel sorry for the biographers of great men. In this case, the subject, Hemingway, lived his larger-than-life life to the fullest, grabbing all the gusto, having his adventures and love affairs while the poor biographer is trapped in his academic cocoon, poring over old papers, scribbling in notebooks, devoting his own life to writing about someone else's life. Such is the lonely world of biographers. Those thought aside, "Hemingway, The Paris Years" is a one fifth of monumental achievement by Reynolds and a must read for any fan of the great man.

Mr. Reynolds continues his bio of EH with the writer's first marriage and Paris years of the early 1920's. Reynolds is excellent in his narrative of EH's developing literary career. The trial and errors of the early stories, the rejection and success of getting the stories published is well told. EH's social life in Paris is well analyzed. Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound are part of EH's life for short periods that EH makes the most of. His life as a reporter and editor are well told too. His life as husband and father is secondary to his work as a writer. Mr. Reynold's skill as a biographer has improved since the first volume. He is less judgemental and lets EH's nasty side reveal itself thru incident rather than excessive criticism. A first rate bio.

This book is wonderfully (and obviously pain-stakingly) crafted. It reads like a novel, but it illuminates Hemingway's personality through subtle, and not so subtle, touches. This is an excellent telling of the early years in Paris and Toronto and of how Hemingway taught himself to write. I especially enjoyed the details of the Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford relationship regarding the Transatlantic publication, and I also enjoyed learning better what Stein gave to Hemingway's writing -- but overall I enjoyed the book evenly from start to finish. This book can stand alone. It was the first one in the series that I'd read. I look forward to reading the others.

I was given this book as well as the second and third in the series (Mystery of the Magician and A Scent of Murder) as a birthday gift when I was eleven or twelve. I loved this series as I was very taken with the romaticism of it. It was very exciting to read about a sixteen year old American girl at the turn of the century, visiting France and solving crimes. I lost my originals long ago, and I recall that the books were not bound very well. Pages started to fall apart while I was reading them.

I work in a bookstore that deals in new books only so was unable to order these as they are (obviously) out of print. Imagine my happiness when I found 1-4 yesterday at a used bookstore, for 60% off of the cover price of $3.95. I came here to see if that was all of the series.

Very glad to have found these and surprised to find out what they're going for here, considering what I paid for them! The cover art is beautiful, and there are very nice pen & ink sketches peppering each book.

Would definitely recommend them for pre-teen girls...all of the elements of good reading for that age group. I'm enjoying re-reading them as well. :)

Scour the used sites/stores...you might get lucky.

I loved this book as a young teen, and I was hoping to let my children read it someday. Ms. Howard's descriptions of Paris were so real that I felt like I was the one solving the mystery with Paris. This book should be released again!

I read this book based on an excellent review of it (a good primer for Mavis Gallant newbies, btw) in the April (or May?) Harper's (a great store room for hidden gems.) I had never heard of Ms. Galant before I read the review and her book, but after reading Paris Stories, all I gotta say is, Where the hell have I been since she's been writing for the past 30+ years? Actually I'm only 30, but still. Her writing is magical on so many levels that I'll only mention a couple of them: the consistency and the sublime richness of her prose - it's like really rich fudge, a phrase or two of one of the 15+ stories is often enough for one sitting; the hauntingly subtle rendering of European life; the authority and command of her voice - there is no doubt in my mind that Mavis Gallant was put on this earth to write fiction as her job, and she writes like she knows it. I love that.

2 recommendations: read Michael Ondaajte's intro (in it he mentions that he knows other writers who intentionally refrain from reading Mavis Gallant when they are writing themselves, so they don't lose confidence in themselves); read the afterward, written by the auther herself (in it she makes the wise suggestion to the reader NOT read the stories in the book back to back, but to take one's time and savor every morsal - I concur. Read this book very slowly pausing to read other stuff perhaps - you don't want to miss a word, it's that good.)

Lovers of sublime artwork in literature, read Mavis Gallant. I guarantee you will not be disappointed. I can't wait for Volume 2 to come out this fall!

If you ever expect to find that little bistro on Pas. de Clery, or a park on R. du Fouarre, you'll need a detailed map. This is it. This has the stuff that is not on the other tourist maps.

There's a key map (a city map with a numbered grid showing the page numbers of the detail maps that follow for each section of the city). And there's a complete street index.

The 29 detailed city maps are divided into two-page spreads. They're labeled with sights, Metro stops, and establishments.

The bus routes are shaded gray, and the bus numbers are printed in red alongside the streets. I spent some time in Paris and came to love commuting by bus on clear days. If you plan to try it, leave some extra time to figure it all out, it's worth the effort. You'll need more info than is provided here. A current bus map would be a big help in planning your day trips, ...

Metro stops are marked on the street maps, but the metro routes are not shown. There's a small metro map on pages 2-3, followed by some very condensed practical information for tourists. (If you need guidebook information, don't rely solely on this book, get a Michelin.)

The detail maps leave out substantial parts of the 12th, 13th, 15th, 18th and 20th arrondissements. If you want something comprehensive, though not as user-friendly, look for "Paris par Arrondissement - Plan Net" by Editions Ponchet. That guide also has detailed bus routes.

I prefer the book map format over fold-out maps, because it gives me a detailed map, but I don't have to fight with it to get it folded and back into my pocket. Ironically, I did end up folding this book to get it into my back pocket. I wish the form factor were slightly narrower.

Bon Voyage!

I am not an impulse shopper, but I bought this little book when I went to Amazon to buy Rick Steve's Paris guide (also great). It has an amazing amount of information in a small but easy to read format - and this means easy to read for eyes that are not so young anymore. It fits in a pocket and weighs almost nothing. It has a Metro map, of course, but also maps of the city in small sections as you would expect in a really good atlas. You can find Metro stops, bus routes and numbers, small streets, and sights in each area. Because it is so much smaller than a typical atlas, it is easy to take with you and use - on a crowded Metro train for example. Although free maps are easy to come by in Paris, this is worth every nickel. It even has great sightseeing information. A bargain at twice the price.

Middleditch's mapguides are the best I have used (I also have used his London mapguide). The maps are larger in scale than most others, which makes them much easier to use. He indicates bus routes on the maps themselves and includes a larger-than-most Metro map. He gives you everything you need to get around in a compact booklet--no irritating folding and unfolding. His commentary on the museums and sights is informative with a personal touch. I just returned from a week in Paris and feel like I couldn't have done without it. If you purchase only one guide to Paris, make it this one!

Book and Author: "Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, and Tips from the Cooks and Food Merchants of Paris," by Michael Roberts. Roberts pioneered California cuisine at his Los Angeles restaurant, Trumps, and is the author of "Secret Ingredients," "Make-Ahead Gourmet" and "What's for Dinner." Details: William Morrow, $25; 352 pages, 175 recipes, black-and-white photographs of Parisian markets and habitues throughout.

Description: Roberts starts off with advice on how to shop Parisian style in your hometown (frequent small markets; develop relationships with purveyors), then launches into recipes for every course, which are appended with kitchen tips and trenchant tales of marketing and cooking in Paris. Assessment: During this vogue for all things Italian, Roberts clearly wants to rescue French food from its current reputation as fussy and outdated. He absolutely succeeds with this well-written collection of vigorous, straightforward recipes. The book also paints a vivid picture of Roberts' Parisian crowd, urbane professionals who happen to whip up fabulous meals in their tiny kitchens. -Erica Marcus .

NEW YOUR TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW JUNE 6, 1999

The new rush-to-the-stoves book is Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes and Tips From the Cooks and Food Merchants of Paris......a collection of recipes lovingly and cannily collected from Parisians young and old-- a concierge, a hip friend and his mother, a fellow American in Paris, the butcher at the street market and many other garrulous vendors. Roberts, a longtime Los Angeles restaurant chef and (with Barbara Kafka) one of the country's few truly original thinkers about cooking, returned to Paris 20 years after receiving his culinary schooling there, armed with a student's enthusiasm, an anthropologist's curiosity, a born schmoozer's way of eliciting cooking secrets and a sensational sense of taste. He rediscovers techniques born of Parisian practicality in the face of minimal burners and unreliable ovens: duck cooked and defatted in a pressure cooker before being finished in the oven, chicken roasted in a closely covered casserole, steak seared in a cast-iron skillet over high heat. Techniques and recipes like this will make cooks who cut their teeth on Julia Child and then moved on to Italy fall in love with French cooking all over again.

...everything I make from this book is truly delicious and , may I add, nutritious. Parisian Home Cooking teaches us that the value of fresh and diverse ingredients, simply prepared is the core of true health; dishes that yearn to be enjoyed amoung friends and actually leave you energy to enjoy their company! I just love the woman who refuses to spend more than fifteen minutes at her stove yet serves up divine dinners; the butcher's timeless admonition that for the body to work it must have some fat - how avant; the tips that coax real flavor from simple foods - to "sweeten" the vinegar for the perfect vinaigrette by adding a splash of wine (just one tip of many). As the diet gurus duke it out for your dollars, look at the slim, healthy Parisians in the photographs, read what they eat at home, and you will toss out the crazed American diet fads with relief. This book will feed you. It's also a good read. Move over Dr. Ornish and Monsieur Pepin - the secret is out!

When I described my fascination with Balzac to a pal of mine, I said, "yeah, it is all about disillusioned and cynical people" and he replied: "I am already disillusioned and cynical, so why should I read it?"

Why indeed. This is indispuably one of the best of Balzac's novels, with clearly drawn characters and grim lives in an inexorable descent to self-destruction, which are the classic Balzac themes. It explores the life of a libertine as he ruins himself and his family for the sake of pursuing pretty girls. Unbekonst to him, he gets help from Bette, a cousin full of secret hatreds and bent on vengence. It is very sad to read. One minor character even commits suicide by repeatedly smashing his head into a nail, his only means to finish himself off he could find in his jail cell.

So why read it? Well, again, it is for the wider social portraits that you can find, which are offered almost as an aside. Balzac in one section explains the politics behind the statues you see all over Paris, which is fascinating. You also learn of the career of courtisans, as they use their sex to advance themselves. The book is simply full of these thngs, in addition to the psychology of the many interesting main characters.

Also unusual for Balzac is the coherency of the story, which does not degenerate into ramblings like many of his other novels as they weave the tapestry of his Comedie Humaine like so many threads, that is, as vehicles in his vast project to fully portray an entire society with characters re-appearing in different situations and venues throughout his interrelated novels. The characters stand on their own here and are more clearly drawn. Hence, it is a great intro to Balzac and may get you hooked for more, that is, if you are masochistic enough to subject yourself to it!

Warmly recommended.

This is a remarkable book, setting the template for Flaubert and Zola's respective journeys into the sordid human psyche.

Lisbeth is a peasant girl from Alsace, bitter at her cousin Adeline's preferential treatment during their childhood. Vindictive Bette decides to cut the family from its wealth, as well as to debase her family personally. It's not difficult when Adeline's husband Hector becomes so weak-kneed over a pretty face that he would compromise his family if it came to a choice between sex and relatives. Lisbeth maneuvers skilfully, befriending Madame Marneffe, an unhappily married woman with numerous lovers who only wants to see her sickly husband made a manager of his governmental department. Installed in this household as a spy for hector (who is smitten with Marneffe), Lisbeth works toward an alliance with Marneffe, on one side to destroy the Hulot's, on the other to gain the love of Count Steinbock, to whom Lisbeth is a benefactress.

I saw a feminist agenda in this novel. Consider: Whereas Hector Hulot is not frowned upon for his numerous infidelities, and indeed feels no guilt even though his longsuffering wife turns a blind eye, when Adeline, in trying to save her family, attempts to seduce a wealthy perfumer named Crevel, she fears dishonor for herself, and feels immeasurable guilt over the infidelity she never even commits. Could Balzac be commenting on the fact that both women and men should be allowed their indiscretions? Call it immaterial. Also, the female characters are by and large either intelligent and conniving (Madame Marneffe, Lisbeth), or beautiful and virtuous (Adeline, Hortense). The men are scandalously disloyal (Steinbock, Hector), or inneffectual and dissolute (Monsieur Marneffe, Crevel). A fresh perspective...from a male author. Great in every way, even if quite convoluted.

"Beauty is the greatest of human powers. All autocratic unbridled power with nothing to counterbalance it, leads to abuse, mad excess. Despotism is power gone mad. In women, despotism takes the form of satisfying their whims". This remark engulfs Balzac's opera: To collate the audience with the obliterating debauchery society of 18th century France. Lisbeth Fischer aka Cousin Bette lurks in every chapter as a concealed beast coveting her prey (The house of Hulot) under the same roof. Perhaps Balzac's major achievement in this master piece, is to portrait a flauntering society feigned by its ostentatious opulence but immerse on a licentious and decadent life. "The savage has feelings... only the civilized man has feelings and ideas." Balzac seems to banter at Parisians with this idea: how civilized, civilized society can be. I strongly recommend this book if you intend to follow De Laclos work in Les Liasions Dangereuses. As an amateur reader I founded the characters difficult to identify at the beginning, however is an strategy smartly set by Balzac and very much appreciated as soon as you start to realize and pace through the richness of the narration.

Ostensibly a novel, this book is Orwell's thinly fictional account of a time he spent "slumming it" in Paris and London. Orwell had read and greatly admired Jack London's book, "People of the Abyss" (1902), which chronicled his time spent among the wretched poor of London at the turn of the century. In the prewar '30s Orwell followed London's journalistic example, and voluntarily entered the ranks of the barely surviving in Paris. His account is rich in it's evocation of sights, sounds, and characters of this day-to-day existence. When he isn't unemployed and pawning his clothes, he works 12-18 hour days as a "plongeur" (dishwasher/gopher) at various hotels and restaurants. It's a pretty awful never-ending cycle of poverty to be caught in, as Orwell's books amply demonstrates. He ends his Paris section by speaking directly to the reader about the reasons for such poverty. Rather than claim any kind of nobility in poverty, he points out that the terrible jobs he and his friends perform are largely useless work and can be easily made obsolete. Later he moves over to London and joins the ranks of the homeless tramps. This section is less vivid and strong, and is better as a simple sociological study of homelessness in Edwardian England. He somewhat awkwardly inserts a lot of info about slang which is interesting, but somewhat tangential. The extreme policies he decries here have been replaced by the modern welfare state economy. Altogether, it's an interesting journalistic/sociological exercise with some strong statements.

In his semi-autobiographical work "Down & Out in Paris and London", Orwell first takes us to Paris in the late 1930's where the narrator (who bears a striking resemblance to Orwell) is living in squalid hotels and desperately trying to get by. Unable to find work as a writer, he gets jobs in hotels and restaurants, working long hours as a plongeur/dishwasher. His accounts of what occurs in the kitchens and back rooms of fine dining establishments make one think twice about dining out. The narrator shares accounts of others he meets living a similar life and how they survive by continually pawning their belongings to buy scraps of food. In the second part of the book, the narrator, sick of life in Paris and longing for the familiarity of Britain, moves back to London to begin a job. The job does not begin immediately so he spends time as a tramp moving from shelter to shelter. The system and policies of these shelters was very enlightening.

I personally enjoyed the Paris part of the book more than the London part. The writing in "Down & Out in Paris and London" is simple yet wonderful and sharp. It is a relatively easy read and highly informative. As you read the book you begin to understand what it must be like to live a life of poverty.

"Down and Out in Paris and London" is Orwell's compulsively readable account of the time he spent among the poor and destitute in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In Paris, he sought work as a "plonguer", trying to stave off starvation, and encountered a range of characters of various nationalities who occupied what might be termed the basement of the Parisian working classes. The descriptions of what it is like to be without any means of support - particularly the tedium of it all - strike true, but the most stomach-churning sections were those devoted to life in the kitchens of the hotels and restaurants.

In England, Orwell lived for a time among the "tramps" - dispossessed itinerants, who according to Orwell were forced into that way of life by the antiquated system of poor relief.

One can contrast Orwell's experiences in France and England, and examine the differences (as indeed Orwell does himself), but in all, this book is a savage indictment of the exploitation of certain sections of society and the damaging effects of the lack of effective poor relief. Even if one takes the view that the poor will always be with us, Orwell's book is a warning that none of our lives are really unaffected by it.