A newly-released letter shows that US-born poet T.S. Eliot refused to publish George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' for its Trotskyite politics.

The 1944 letter, revealed by Eliot's widow Valerie, shows that Eliot dismissed the novel while he was director of British publishers Faber and Faber.

Although Eliot praised the book's "good writing" and "fundamental integrity", he said that Orwell's view "which I take to be generally Trotskyite, is not convincing."

"We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at the current time," said the Noble-Prize winning poet.

Animal Farm which turned out to be a classic of modern English literature was published by Secker & Warburg the following year in 1945.

The novel is known as an allegory of how the Russian revolution in 1917 was followed by a new form of brutal rule under the Soviet Union.

Eric Arthur Blair known as George Orwell was an English author, whose works reflected social injustice, anti- totalitarianism, and a passion for clarity in language.

The 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and 1934 Burmese Days are among his best-known works.

TE/MD