Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The joke in the title is, of course, that Wigan is a northern industrial town that doesn't have a pier. It's only a few miles away from where I live.
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Based on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier
Quote:
The name of the book comes from a music hall routine by a British comedian. Although a pier is a structure built out into the water from the shore, in Britain the term has the connotation of a seaside holiday. Wigan was a small grimy coal town on a canal accessed by boats via an offloading structure, although it primarily used land transport. Hence the music hall joke of a coal town with its own seaside resort, and Orwell's choice of title implied his belief that socialism could improve life to an unprecedented degree even in a coal town.
Orwell also mentions that Wigan did not actually have a pier because it collapsed some years before he visited.
All that remains of Wigan Pier is a section of raised railway track.
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We've added a lot of Orwell's books on Feedbooks lately, that's why I remembered this:
http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_author/204