George Orwell (d. 1950)

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Biography

Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.

In Their Own Words (5)

One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.

Ch. 7; a remark by Boris , 1933

Living a lie the whole time — the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them ... it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can't imagine.

John Flory, Ch. III , 1934

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. ... Dirtiness is inherent in hotels and restaurants, because sound food is sacrificed to punctuality and smartness... The only food at the Hotel X which was ever prepared cleanly was the staff's.

Ch. 14 , 1933

Man is not a Yahoo, but he is rather like a Yahoo and needs to be reminded of it from time to time.

Review of Tropic of Cancer, in New English Weekly (14 November 1935) , 1935

"Ah, the poverty, the shortness the disappointment of human joy! For in reality car en realite, what is the duration of the supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that- dust, ashes, nothingness."

Ch. 2, Charlie , 1933

Timeline

The story of George Orwell, told in moments.

1903 Birth

Born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, British India. His father works for the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service, overseeing opium production for sale to China. His mother takes him to England at age one. He won't see his father again until he's 8.

Your father oversaw opium production in India. Did that hypocrisy shape your politics? What was it like being taken from India to England at age one?

1933 Life

Publishes Down and Out in Paris and London under the pen name George Orwell. He'd spent years deliberately living in poverty: sleeping in flophouses, washing dishes in Paris restaurants, tramping through England. He chose the pen name from the River Orwell in Suffolk. He never used his birth name again publicly.

You deliberately lived in poverty for years. Was that research or self-punishment? Why George Orwell? Was Eric Blair too comfortable a name?

1937 Event

Shot through the throat by a Fascist sniper while fighting for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. The bullet misses his carotid artery by millimeters. He can barely speak for weeks. When he returns to Barcelona, his Marxist militia unit has been declared illegal by the Communists. He and his wife flee Spain to avoid arrest.

Shot through the throat by a Fascist sniper. Did you feel lucky or cursed? Your own militia was declared illegal by the Communists you fought alongside. Was that the betrayal that shaped everything?

1945 Event

Animal Farm is published after being rejected by multiple publishers, including one that consulted the British Ministry of Information. T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber turned it down too. The allegory of the Russian Revolution sells 25,000 copies in its first five years in Britain. It's never been out of print.

T.S. Eliot turned down Animal Farm. Was that the most frustrating rejection? Did you expect the allegory to be obvious or did readers miss it?

1949 Event

Nineteen Eighty-Four is published. He wrote most of it on the Scottish island of Jura while dying of tuberculosis. Big Brother, Thought Police, Newspeak, doublethink, Room 101. He gives the English language a vocabulary for totalitarianism. He is 45 and has months to live.

Writing Nineteen Eighty-Four while dying of TB on a Scottish island. Was that desperation or discipline? Big Brother, doublethink, Newspeak. Did you know you were giving the language permanent new words?

1950 Death

Dies of a burst artery in his lungs at University College Hospital, London. He is 46. He'd married his second wife, Sonia Brownell, in his hospital room three months earlier. The Times later names him the second-greatest British writer since 1945.

Married in your hospital room three months before dying. Was that hope or farewell? Is there anything Nineteen Eighty-Four got wrong about the future?