from the University College London Library—January 28^th, 1947 to May 14^th, 1947

Dear Mr. Orwell,

Thank you for your submission. We enjoyed the piece very much, but were unable to find a place for it in our upcoming issue. Please feel free to submit again in the future.

Kind regards,

Peter Cherdle

Dear Mr. Orwell,

We’re glad that you decided to submit to us again, but—and correct me if I’m mistaken—it seems that the enclosed story is precisely the same as the piece we declined, only all the characters have been replaced with talking animals. Am I wrong in this assumption? In any case, we will not be able to use your work at this time.

Kind regards,

Peter Cherdle

Dear Mr. Orwell,

We understand allegory. I assure you this is not the reason for our rejection. We’ve never been ones to shy away from politically subversive work (Animal Farm is a favorite among our staff). In the end, we felt that the characters in this particular story were underdeveloped.

Yours,

Peter Cherdle

Dear Mr. Orwell

Thank you for your submission. Again, this doesn’t solve the underlying problem with your story. From what I can tell, all you’ve done is replace the talking animals with talking vegetables.

If you’re looking for a more specific critique, we thought the character of Claude (currently “Claude the Carrot”) is missing sufficient motivation to justify his actions. Why does he want to leave Veggietown? What causes him to steal money from his master, the giant cabbage?

Yours,

Peter Cherdle

Dear Mr. Orwell,

I’m pleased that you’ve decided to revert back to the original. However, again, I strongly feel that you should change all the characters to humans, including the evil celery stalks. That’s just one editor’s opinion. I encourage you to keep sending it out—preferably to journals other than ours.

Sincerely,

Peter Cherdle