“The Road to Wigan Pier“ is a book by George Orwell, an English novelist, essayist, and journalist. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.   The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism.