Solnit details the period of Orwell’s life in which he was researching what became his book about the struggles of the English working class, The Road to Wigan Pier. This is what brought him to Wallington in the first place, where he eventually bought the cottage alongside which he planted roses. He embedded himself with the people who worked and faced difficult conditions in the mines: Manchester was the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, which was fueled by coal. The town of Wigan was dominated by the mining industry, and Orwell depicted it as devoid of vegetation and blanketed in smoke and ash. The people existed in the industry’s shadow, enduring “hunger and chronic undernourishment, defeat and despair,” and bouts of unemployment that “left men stranded and families barely hanging on” (53). The work caused frequent injuries and constant illnesses.

In addition, Orwell observed the relative invisibility of the conditions in which coal was produced. The average middle-class Englishperson (like himself), burning coal for warmth or for cooking, was usually unaware of the human toll for their comfort. His reporting “was rectifying this obliviousness” in the service of human rights (55). Solnit suggests that this story, the story of mining in general, reveals a history of ecological destruction as well.