George Orwell’s discussion of more modern writing’s tendency to become unnecessarily complex illustrates why there seem to be fewer popular elevated works in more recent history than in the decades and centuries prior. In the 19th century, for instance, popular books included works such as The Scarlet Letter, whereas today works such as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter are more popular. One reason for this is that such works resist the tendency for long, winding phrases unnecessarily utilizing sesquipedalian loquaciousness. Because they are aimed at children and teens, they need to avoid long and complicated sentence structure. As such, they innately repel many of the problems that Orwell mentions in more elevated writing: the tendency for "verbal false limbs" and "pretentious diction" is reduced.
Older writing avoided these tendencies by carefully going over every word. Consider the symbolism so intricately wound into works such as The Great Gatzby and Heart of Darkness; at times the author must carefully choose each specific word, considering their work so carefully as to focus on each individual word of their work. Vergil spent years crafting his twelve-book several-thousand-line poem The Aeneid, writing about 15 lines a day; he ordered his servant to burn it at the time of his death because, although he had finished it, he intended to spend the next two years editing it. This is why modern writers do not form enduring works as past authors do: because they focus on appearing to be a good, intelligent author, using longwinded structure to appear well-educated, unlike authors of popular works, who typically write for children, and authors of centuries prior, whose works are so precise that one could write an essay about a single page of their work.
