Orwell Dies at 46: Big Brother's Creator Silenced
He was dying of tuberculosis when he finished Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell wrote most of it on the island of Jura in the Scottish Hebrides, alone in a farmhouse with no electricity or central heating. He was so ill at the end that he typed the final draft himself because he couldn't find a secretary willing to travel to Jura. He died in January 1950, seven months after publication. The book had already sold 50,000 copies. He was 46. Animal Farm had been rejected by twelve publishers, including T. S. Eliot at Faber, who thought the pigs should win.
January 21, 1950
76 years ago
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