George Orwell

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George Orwell
Press cardportrait, 1943
Born	Eric Arthur Blair (1903-06-25)25 June 1903 Motihari,Bengal Presidency,British India
Died	21 January 1950(1950-01-21)(aged 46) London, England
Resting place	All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay,Oxfordshire, England
Education	Eton College
Occupations	Novelist essayist journalist literary critic
Political party	Independent Labour(from 1938)
Spouses	Eileen O'Shaughnessy ​ ​ (m.1936; died 1945)​ Sonia Brownell ​ (m.1949)​
Children	Richard Blair
Writing career
Pen name	George Orwell
Language	English
Genre	Dystopia roman à clef satire literary criticism polemic opinion journalism
Subjects	Anti-fascism anti-Stalinism anarchism democratic socialism
Years active	1928–1949
Notable works	Down and Out in Paris and London(1933) The Road to Wigan Pier(1937) Homage to Catalonia(1938) Animal Farm(1945) Nineteen Eighty-Four(1949)
Signature

Eric Arthur Blair(25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was a British novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under thepen nameofGeorge Orwell,a name inspired by his favourite place, theRiver Orwell.His work is characterised by lucidprose,social criticism,opposition to alltotalitarianism(i.e. to both left-wing authoritarian communism and to right-wing fascism), and support ofdemocratic socialism.

Orwell is best known for hisallegoricalnovellaAnimal Farm(1945) and thedystopiannovelNineteen Eighty-Four(1949), although his works also encompassliterary criticism,poetry, fiction, andpolemicaljournalism. His non-fiction works, includingThe Road to Wigan Pier(1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, andHomage to Catalonia(1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for theRepublican factionof theSpanish Civil War(1936–1939), are as critically respected as hisessayson politics, literature,languageand culture.

Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and inpolitical culture,and the adjective "Orwellian"—describingtotalitarianand authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of hisneologisms,such as "Big Brother","Thought Police","Room 101","Newspeak","memory hole","doublethink",and"thoughtcrime".In 2008,The Timesnamed Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.

Life

Early years

Orwell's birthplace inMotihari,Bihar,India

Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 inMotihari,Bengal Presidency (nowBihar),British India,into what he described as a "lower-upper-middle class"family.His great-great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was a wealthy slaveowningcountry gentlemanandabsentee ownerof twoJamaican plantations;hailing fromDorset,he married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the8th Earl of Westmorland.His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was anAnglicanclergyman. Orwell's father was Richard Walmesley Blair, who worked as a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent in theOpium Departmentof theIndian Civil Service,overseeing the production and storage ofopiumfor sale to China.His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (néeLimouzin), grew up inMoulmein,Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures.Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older; and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and Marjorie to England.In 2014 restoration work began on Orwell's birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari.

Blair family home atShiplake,Oxfordshire

In 1904, Ida settled with her children atHenley-on-Thamesin Oxfordshire. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters and, apart from a brief visit in mid-1907,he did not see his father until 1912.Aged five, Eric was sent as a day student to aconvent schoolin Henley-on-Thames. It was a Catholicconventrun by FrenchUrsulinenuns.His mother wanted him to have apublic schooleducation, but his family could not afford it. Through the social connections of Ida's brother Charles Limouzin, Blair gained a scholarship toSt Cyprian's SchoolinEastbourne,East Sussex.Arriving in September 1911, he boarded for the next five years, returning home only for holidays. Although he knew nothing of the reduced fees, he "soon recognised that he was from a poorer home".Blair hated the schooland many years later wrote an essay "Such, Such Were the Joys",published posthumously, based on his time there. At St Cyprian's, Blair first metCyril Connolly,who became a writer and who, as the editor ofHorizon,published several of Orwell's essays.

Blair's time at St. Cyprian's inspired his essay "Such, Such Were the Joys".

The essay recounts Blair hiking across theSouth Downsand bathing among the boulders atBeachy Headon the south coast of England.

Before theFirst World War,the family moved 2 miles (3 km) south toShiplake,Oxfordshire, where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughterJacintha.When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. Asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up."Growing up together, Buddicom and Blair became idealistic adolescent sweethearts, reading and writing poetry together, and dreaming of becoming famous writers.Blair also enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister.

While at St Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems that were published in theHenley and South Oxfordshire Standard.He came second to Connolly in theHarrow History Prize,had his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships toWellingtonandEton.But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available. He chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916, in case a place at Eton became available.

First World War poem by 11-year-old Blair, "Awake! Young Men of England", published in 1914 in theHenley and South Oxfordshire Standard

In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington, where he spent the Spring term. In May 1917 a place became available as aKing's Scholarat Eton. At this time the family lived at Mall Chambers, Notting Hill Gate. Blair remained at Eton until December 1921, when he left midway between his 18th and 19th birthdays. Wellington was "beastly", Blair told Jacintha, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton.His principal tutor wasA. S. F. Gow,Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge,who gave him advice later in his career.Blair was taught French byAldous Huxley.Steven Runciman,who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair.

Blair's performance reports suggest he neglected his studies,but he worked withRoger Mynorsto produce a college magazine,The Election Times,joined in the production of other publications—College DaysandBubble and Squeak—and participated in theEton Wall Game.His parents could not afford to send him to university without another scholarship, and they concluded from his poor results he would not be able to win one. Runciman noted he had a romantic idea about theEast,and the family decided Blair should join theImperial Police,the precursor of the Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance examination. In December 1921 he left Eton and travelled to join his retired father, mother, and younger sister Avril, who that month had moved to 40 Stradbroke Road,Southwold,Suffolk, the first of their four homes in the town.Blair was enrolled at acrammerthere called Craighurst, and brushed up on his Classics, English, and History. He passed the exam, coming seventh out of the 26 who passed.

Policing in Burma

Blair pictured in a passport photo in Burma. This was the last time he had atoothbrush moustache;he would later acquire apencil moustachesimilar to other British officers stationed in Burma.

Blair's maternal grandmother lived atMoulmein,so he chose a posting inBurma,then still a province of British India. In October 1922 he sailed on board SSHerefordshireto join theIndian Imperial Policein Burma. A month later, he arrived atRangoonand travelled to the police training school inMandalay.He was appointed an Assistant District Superintendent (on probation) on 29 November 1922,at the pay ofRs.525 per month.After a short posting atMaymyo,Burma's principalhill station,he was posted to the frontier outpost ofMyaungmyain theIrrawaddy Deltaat the beginning of 1924.

Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. When he was posted farther east in the Delta toTwanteas a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was posted toSyriam,closer to Rangoon. Syriam had the refinery of theBurmah Oil Company,"the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed off by the fumes ofsulphur dioxidepouring out day and night from the stacks of the refinery. "But the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport, and Blair went into the city as often as he could," to browse in a bookshop; to eat well-cooked food; to get away from the boring routine of police life ".In September 1925 he went toInsein,the home ofInsein Prison.By this time, Blair had completed his training and was receiving a monthly salary of Rs. 740, including allowances.

Blair recalled he faced hostility from the Burmese, "in the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves". He recalled that "I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible".

British Club inKatha, Myanmar

In Burma, Blair acquired a reputation as an outsider. He spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-pukkaactivities, such as attending the churches of theKarenethnic group. A colleague, Roger Beadon, recalled that Blair was fast to learn the language and that before he left Burma, "was able to speak fluently with Burmese priests in 'very high-flown Burmese'."Blair made changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life, including adopting apencil moustache.Emma Larkinwrites in the introduction toBurmese Days:

While in Burma, he acquired a moustache similar to those worn by officers of the British regiments stationed there. [He] also acquired some tattoos; on each knuckle he had a small untidy blue circle. Many Burmese living in rural areas still sport tattoos like this—they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites.

In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned toKathainUpper Burma,where he contracteddengue feverin 1927. Entitled to aleavein England that year, he was allowed to return in July due to his illness. While on holiday with his family inCornwallin September 1927, he reappraised his life. Deciding against returning to Burma, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer, with effect from 12 March 1928.He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novelBurmese Days(1934) and the essays "A Hanging"(1931) and"Shooting an Elephant"(1936).

London and Paris

The blue house on the right was Blair's 1927 lodgings inPortobello Road,London.

In England, he settled back in the family home atSouthwold,renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending anOld Etoniandinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer.In 1927 he moved to London.Ruth Pitter,a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms inPortobello Road;ablue plaquecommemorates his residence there.Pitter's involvement in the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs. Blair's eyes." Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and ventured into theEast End of London—the first of the occasional sorties he would make intermittently over a period of five years to discover the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it.

In imitation ofJack London,whose writing he admired (particularlyThe People of the Abyss), Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out toLimehouse Causeway,spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's "kip". For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like atramp,adopting the name P.S. Burton; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in "The Spike",his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book,Down and Out in Paris and London(1933).

Rue du Pot de Fer on theLeft Bankin the5th arrondissement,where Blair lived in Paris

In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the5th arrondissement.His aunt Ellen (Nellie) Kate Limouzin also lived in Paris (with theEsperantistEugène Lanti) and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version ofBurmese Days,but nothing else survives from that period.He was more successful as a journalist and published articles inMonde,a political/literary journal edited byHenri Barbusse(his first article as a professional writer, "La Censure en Angleterre", appeared in that journal on 6 October 1928);G. K.'s Weekly,where his first article to appear in England, "A Farthing Newspaper", was printed on 29 December 1928;andLe Progrès Civique(founded by the left-wing coalitionLe Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks inLe Progrès Civique:discussing unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject—at the heart of almost everything he wrote untilHomage to Catalonia."

He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to theHôpital Cochin,a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay "How the Poor Die",published in 1946 (though he chose not to identify the hospital). Shortly afterwards, he had all his money stolen from his lodging house. Whether through necessity or to collect material, he undertook menial jobs such as dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on therue de Rivoli,which he later described inDown and Out in Paris and London.In August 1929, he sent a copy of "The Spike"toJohn Middleton Murry'sNew Adelphimagazine in London. The magazine was edited byMax PlowmanandSir Richard Rees,and Plowman accepted the work for publication.

Southwold

Southwold PierinSouthwold.Orwell wroteA Clergyman's Daughter(1935) in the town, basing the fictional town of Knype Hill partly on Southwold.

In December 1929 after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house inSouthwold,a coastal town inSuffolk,which remained his base for the next five years. The family was well established in the town, where his sister Avril ran a tea-house. He became acquainted with many local people, including Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman's daughter who worked as a gym-teacher atSt Felix Girls' School.Although Salkeld rejected his offer of marriage, she remained a friend and regular correspondent for many years. He also renewed friendships with older friends, such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life.

In early 1930 he stayed briefly inBramley, Leeds,with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin. Blair was writing reviews forAdelphiand acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He then became tutor to three young brothers, one of whom,Richard Peters,later became a distinguished academic.

His history in these years is marked by dualities and contrasts. There is Blair leading a respectable, outwardly eventless life at his parents' house in Southwold, writing; then in contrast, there is Blair as Burton (the name he used in his down-and-out episodes) in search of experience in the kips and spikes, in the East End, on the road, and in the hop fields of Kent.

He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz, who later influenced his career. Over the next year he visited them in London, often meeting their friend Max Plowman. He also often stayed at the homes of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees, where he could "change" for his sporadic tramping expeditions. One of his jobs was domestic work at a lodgings forhalf a crown(two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound) a day.

Blair now contributed regularly toAdelphi,with "A Hanging"appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like the protagonist ofA Clergyman's Daughter,he followed theEast Endtradition of working in the Kenthopfields. He kept a diary about his experiences there. Afterwards, he lodged in theTooley Street kip,but could not stand it for long, and with financial help from his parents moved to Windsor Street, where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appeared in the October 1931 issue ofNew Statesman,whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact withLeonard Moore,who became hisliterary agentin April 1932.

At this timeJonathan CaperejectedA Scullion's Diary,the first version ofDown and Out.On the advice of Richard Rees, he offered it toFaber & Faber,but their editorial director,T. S. Eliot,also rejected it. Blair ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested,so that he could experience Christmas in prison, but after he was picked up and taken toBethnal Greenpolice station in theEast End of Londonthe authorities did not regard his "drunk and disorderly" behaviour as imprisonable, and after two days in a cell he returned home to Southwold.

Teaching career

In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a school for boys, inHayes,west London. This was a small private school, and had only 14 or 16 boys aged between ten and sixteen, and one other master.While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair thatVictor Gollanczwas prepared to publishA Scullion's Diaryfor a £40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house,Victor Gollancz Ltd,which was an outlet for radical and socialist works.

At the end of the summer term in 1932, Blair returned to Southwold, where his parents had used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the holidays making the house habitable while he also worked onBurmese Days.He was also spending time with Eleanor Jacques, but her attachment to Dennis Collings remained an obstacle to his hopes of a more serious relationship.

The pen name George Orwell was inspired by theRiver Orwellin the English county of Suffolk.

Aerial view of the River Orwell

"Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in the August 1932 number ofAdelphi.He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known asDown and Out in Paris and London.He wished to publish under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a "tramp".In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932), he left the choice of pseudonym to Moore and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms P. S. Burton (a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, and H. Lewis Allways.He finally adopted thepen nameGeorge Orwell because "It is a good round English name."The name George was inspired by thepatron saint of England,and Orwell after theRiver Orwellin Suffolk which was one of Orwell's favourite locations.

Down and Out in Paris and Londonwas published by Victor Gollancz in London on 9 January 1933 and received favourable reviews, withCecil Day-Lewiscomplimenting Orwell's "clarity and good sense", andThe Times Literary Supplementcomparing Orwell's eccentric characters to thecharacters of Dickens.Down and Outwas modestly successful and was next published byHarper & Brothersin New York.

In mid-1933 Blair left Hawthorns to become a teacher atFrays College,inUxbridge,west London. This was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorcycle and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he became soaked and caught a chill that developed into pneumonia. He was taken to acottage hospitalin Uxbridge, where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934, he returned to Southwold to convalesce and, supported by his parents, never returned to teaching.

He was disappointed when Gollancz turned downBurmese Days,mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in the United States. Meanwhile, Blair started work on the novelA Clergyman's Daughter,drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. Eventually in October, after sendingA Clergyman's Daughterto Moore, he left for London to take a job that had been found for him by his aunt Nellie Limouzin.

Hampstead

Orwell's former home at 77 Parliament Hill,Hampstead,London

His time as a bookseller is marked with this plaque inPond Street,Hampstead.

This job was as a part-time assistant in Booklovers' Corner, a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in theEsperantomovement. The Westropes were friendly and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions,Pond Street.He was sharing the job withJon Kimche,who also lived with the Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons and had his mornings free to write and his evenings free to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novelKeep the Aspidistra Flying(1936). As well as the various guests of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy the company of Richard Rees and theAdelphiwriters and Mabel Fierz. The Westropes and Kimche were members of theIndependent Labour Party,although at this time Blair was not seriously politically active. He was writing for theAdelphiand preparingA Clergyman's DaughterandBurmese Daysfor publication.

English Heritageblue plaqueinKentish Town,London where Orwell lived from August 1935 until January 1936

At the beginning of 1935 he had to move out of Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him a flat in Parliament Hill.A Clergyman's Daughterwas published on 11 March 1935. In early 1935 Blair met his future wifeEileen O'Shaughnessy,when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology atUniversity College London,invited some of her fellow students to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, recalled Blair and his friendRichard Rees"draped" at the fireplace, looking, she thought, "moth-eaten and prematurely aged."Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews forThe New English Weekly.

In June,Burmese Dayswas published and Cyril Connolly's positive review in theNew Statesmanprompted Blair to re-establish contact with his old friend. In August, he moved into a flat, at 50 Lawford Road,Kentish Town,which he shared withMichael SayersandRayner Heppenstall.The relationship was sometimes awkward and Blair and Heppenstall even came to blows, though they remained friends and later worked together on BBC broadcasts.Blair was now working onKeep the Aspidistra Flying,and also tried unsuccessfully to write a serial for theNews Chronicle.By October 1935 his flatmates had moved out and he was struggling to pay the rent on his own. He remained until the end of January 1936, when he stopped working at Booklovers' Corner. In 1980,English Heritagehonoured Orwell with ablue plaqueat his Kentish Town residence.

The Road to Wigan Pier

Main article:The Road to Wigan Pier

At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating social conditions in economically depressedNorthern England.TheDepressionhad introduced a number of working-class writers from the North of England to the reading public. It was one of these working-class authors,Jack Hilton,whom Orwell sought for advice. Orwell had written to Hilton seeking lodging and asking for recommendations on his route. Hilton was unable to provide him lodging, but suggested that he travel toWiganrather than Rochdale, "for there are the colliers and they're good stuff."

On 31 January 1936, Orwell set out by public transport and on foot. Arriving in Manchester after the banks had closed, he had to stay in a common lodging-house. The next day he picked up a list of contacts sent by Richard Rees. One of these, the trade union official Frank Meade, suggestedWigan,where Orwell spent February staying in dirty lodgings over atripeshop. In Wigan, he visited many homes to see how people lived, went downBryn Hall coal mine,and used thelocal public libraryto consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines.

During this time, he was distracted by concerns about style and possible libel inKeep the Aspidistra Flying.He made a quick visit toLiverpooland during March, stayed in south Yorkshire, spending time inSheffieldandBarnsley.As well as visiting mines, includingGrimethorpe,and observing social conditions, he attended meetings of the Communist Party and ofOswald Mosley( "his speech the usual claptrap—The blame for everything was put upon mysterious international gangs of Jews" ) where he saw the tactics of theBlackshirts.He also made visits to his sister atHeadingley,during which he visited theBrontë ParsonageatHaworth.

A former warehouse atWigan Pieris named after Orwell.

No 2 Kits Lane,Wallington, Hertfordshire,Orwell's residencec.1936–1940

Orwell needed somewhere he could concentrate on writing his book, and once again help was provided by Aunt Nellie, who was living atWallington, Hertfordshirein a very small 16th-century cottage called the "Stores". Orwell took over the tenancy and moved in on 2 April 1936.He started work onThe Road to Wigan Pierby the end of April, but also spent hours working on the garden, planting a rose garden which is still extant, and revealing four years later that "outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening, especially vegetable gardening".He also tested the possibility of reopening the Stores as a village shop.Keep the Aspidistra Flyingwas published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936. On 4 August, Orwell gave a talk at the Adelphi Summer School held atLangham,entitledAn Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas;others who spoke at the school includedJohn Strachey,Max Plowman,Karl PolanyiandReinhold Niebuhr.

The result of his journeys through the north wasThe Road to Wigan Pier,published by Gollancz for theLeft Book Clubin 1937.The first half of the book documents his social investigations ofLancashireandYorkshire,including an evocative description of working life in the coal mines. The second half is a long essay on his upbringing and the development of his political conscience, which includes an argument for socialism. Gollancz feared the second half would offend readers and added a disculpatory preface to the book while Orwell was in Spain.Orwell's research forThe Road to Wigan Pierled to him being placed under surveillance by theSpecial Branchfrom 1936.

Orwell married O'Shaughnessy on 9 June 1936. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned byFrancisco Franco's military uprising, Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in theSpanish Civil Waronthe Republican side.Under the erroneous impression that he needed papers from some left-wing organisation to cross the frontier, onJohn Strachey's recommendation he applied unsuccessfully toHarry Pollitt,leader of theBritish Communist Party.Pollitt was suspicious of Orwell's political reliability; he asked him whether he would undertake to join theInternational Brigadesand advised him to get a safe-conduct from the Spanish Embassy in Paris.Not wishing to commit himself until he had seen the situationin situ,Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction toJohn McNairin Barcelona.

Spanish Civil War

The square in Barcelona renamed in Orwell's honour

Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining withHenry Millerin Paris on the way. Miller told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was "sheer stupidity" and that the Englishman's ideas "about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney".A few days later inBarcelona,Orwell met John McNair of theIndependent Labour Party(ILP) Office.TheRepublican governmentwas supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims, including theWorkers' Party of Marxist Unification(POUM), theanarcho-syndicalistConfederación Nacional del Trabajo(CNT) and theUnified Socialist Party of Catalonia(a wing of theSpanish Communist Party). Orwell was at first exasperated by this "kaleidoscope" of political parties and trade unions.The ILP was linked to the POUM so Orwell joined the POUM.

After a time at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quietAragonFront underGeorges Kopp.By January 1937 he was atAlcubierre1,500 feet (460 m) above sea level, in the depth of winter. There was very little military action and Orwell was shocked by the lack of munitions, food and firewood as well as other extreme deprivations.With his Cadet Corps and police training, Orwell was quickly made a corporal. On the arrival of a BritishILP Contingentabout three weeks later, Orwell and the other English militiaman, Williams, were sent with them toMonte Oscuroand on toHuesca.

Meanwhile, back in England, Eileen had been handling the issues relating to the publication ofThe Road to Wigan Pierbefore setting out for Spain herself, leaving Nellie Limouzin to look after The Stores. Eileen volunteered for a post in John McNair's office and with the help of Georges Kopp paid visits to her husband, bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars.Orwell had to spend some days in hospital with a poisoned handand had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in a night attack on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position.

In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona.Wanting to be sent to the Madrid front, which meant he "must join the International Column", he approached a Communist friend attached to the Spanish Medical Aid and explained his case. "Although he did not think much of the Communists, Orwell was still ready to treat them as friends and allies. That would soon change."During theBarcelona May DaysOrwell was caught up in the factional fighting. He spent much of the time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encounteredJon Kimchefrom his Hampstead days during the stay. The subsequent campaign of lies and distortion carried out by the Communist press,in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on Orwell. Instead of joining the International Brigades as he had intended, he decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the May fighting was over, he was approached by a Communist friend who asked if he still intended transferring to the International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, because according to the Communist press he was a fascist.

Memorial plaque inLleidamarking where Orwell received treatment at the Hospital Santa María de Lleida for his bullet wound to the neck

After his return to the front, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. At 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fightersand had been warned against standing against the trench parapet. Unable to speak, and with blood pouring from his mouth, Orwell was carried on a stretcher toSiétamo,loaded on an ambulance and sent to hospital inLleida.He recovered sufficiently to get up and on 27 May 1937 was sent on toTarragonaand two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin and his voice was barely audible. It had been such a clean shot that the wound immediately went through the process ofcauterisation.He receivedelectrotherapytreatment and was declared medically unfit for service.

By the middle of June, the political situation in Barcelona had deteriorated and the POUM—painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as aTrotskyistorganisation—was outlawed and under attack.Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were in hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to lie low,although they broke cover to try to help Kopp. They finally escaped from Spain by train. In the first week of July 1937 Orwell arrived back at Wallington; on 13 July 1937 a deposition was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason inValencia,charging the Orwells with "rabid Trotskyism", and being agents of the POUM.The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona in October and November 1938. Observing events from French Morocco, Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of theRussian Trotskyist trialsand from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press. "Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War gave rise toHomage to Catalonia(1938).

In his book,The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War,Giles Tremlettwrites that according to Soviet files, Orwell and his wife Eileen were spied on in Barcelona in May 1937.

Rest and recuperation

Laurence O'Shaughnessy's former home, the large house on the corner, 24 Crooms Hill,Greenwich,London

Orwell returned to England in June 1937, and stayed at the O'Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. He found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour.Kingsley Martinrejected two of his works and Gollancz was equally cautious. At the same time, the communistDaily Workerwas running an attack onThe Road to Wigan Pier,taking out of context Orwell writing that "the working classes smell"; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening libel action brought a stop to this. Orwell was also able to find a more sympathetic publisher for his views inFredric Warburgof Secker & Warburg. Orwell returned to Wallington, which he found in disarray after his absence. He acquired goats, a cockerel (rooster) he calledHenry Fordand a poodle puppy he calledMarx;and settled down to animal husbandry and writingHomage to Catalonia.

There were thoughts of going to India to work onThe Pioneer,a newspaper inLucknow,but by March 1938 Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was admitted toPreston Hall SanatoriumatAylesford,Kent, aBritish Legionhospital for ex-servicemen to which his brother-in-law Laurence O'Shaughnessy was attached. He was thought initially to be suffering fromtuberculosisand stayed in the sanatorium until September.Homage to Cataloniawas published in London bySecker & Warburgand was a commercial flop; it re-emerged in the 1950s, following on the success of Orwell's later books.

The novelistL. H. Myerssecretly funded a trip toFrench Moroccofor half a year for Orwell to avoid the English winter and recover his health. The Orwells set out in September 1938 viaGibraltarandTangierto avoidSpanish Moroccoand arrived atMarrakech.They rented a villa on the road toCasablancaand during that time Orwell wroteComing Up for Air.They arrived back in England on 30 March 1939 andComing Up for Airwas published in June. Orwell spent time in Wallington and Southwold working on aDickensessay. In June 1939, Orwell's father died.

Second World War andAnimal Farm

Based inLansdowne Terrace,Bloomsbury,London, Orwell wrote forHorizonmagazine (co-founded byStephen Spender) from 1940

At the outbreak of theSecond World War,Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of theMinistry of Informationin central London, staying during the week with her family inGreenwich.Orwell submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays,Inside the Whale.For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books forThe Listener,Time and TideandNew Adelphi.On 29 March 1940 his long association withTribunebeganwith a review of a sergeant's account ofNapoleon'sretreat from Moscow.At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly'sHorizonappeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work and new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street,Marylebone.It was the time of theDunkirk evacuation,and the death inFlanders,of Eileen's brother, Laurence O'Shaughnessy, caused her considerable grief and long-term depression.

Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board in June, but soon joined theHome Guard.He sharedTom Wintringham's socialist vision for the Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia. His lecture notes for instructing platoon members include advice on street fighting, field fortifications, and the use ofmortars.Sergeant Orwell recruitedFredric Warburgto his unit. During theBattle of Britainhe spent weekends with Warburg and his newZionistfriend,Tosco Fyvel,at Warburg's house atTwyford, Berkshire.At Wallington he worked on "England Your England"and in London wrote reviews for periodicals. Visiting Eileen's family in Greenwich brought him face-to-face with the effects ofthe Blitz.In 1940 he first worked for theBBCas a producer on their Indian Section, while the broadcaster and writerVenu Chitalewas his secretary.In mid-1940, Warburg, Fyvel and Orwell plannedSearchlight Books.Eleven volumes eventually appeared, of which Orwell'sThe Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,published in February 1941, was the first.

Early in 1941 he began to write for the AmericanPartisan Reviewwhich linked Orwell with theNew York Intellectualswho were also anti-Stalinist,and contributed to the Gollancz anthologyThe Betrayal of the Left,written in the light of theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact.He applied unsuccessfully for a job at theAir Ministry.Meanwhile, he was still writing reviews of books and plays and met the novelistAnthony Powell.He took part in radio broadcasts for the Eastern Service of the BBC. In March the Orwells moved to a seventh-floor flat at Langford Court,St John's Wood,while at Wallington Orwell was "digging for victory"by planting potatoes.

"One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten."

— George Orwell, in his war-time diary, 3 July 1941

In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.He supervised cultural broadcasts to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.

At the end of August he had a dinner withH. G. Wellswhich degenerated into a row because Wells had taken offence at observations Orwell made about him in aHorizonarticle. In October Orwell had a bout of bronchitis and the illness recurred frequently.David Astorwas looking for a provocative contributor forThe Observerand invited Orwell to write for him—the first article appearing in March 1942. In early 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work at theMinistry of Foodand in mid-1942 the Orwells moved to a larger flat, 10a Mortimer Crescent inMaida Vale/Kilburn.

Orwell spoke on manyBBCand other broadcasts, but no recordings are known to survive.

At the BBC, Orwell introducedVoice,a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends, particularly on the political left. Late in 1942, he started writing regularly for the left-wing weeklyTribunedirected byLabourMPsAneurin BevanandGeorge Strauss.In March 1943, Orwell's mother died, and around this time he told Moore he was starting work on a book, which turned out to beAnimal Farm.

In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC.His resignation followed a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts,but he was also keen to concentrate on writingAnimal Farm.On 24 November 1943, six days before his last day of service, his adaptation of thefairy tale,Hans Christian Andersen'sThe Emperor's New Clotheswas broadcast. It was a genre in which he was greatly interested and which appeared onAnimal Farm's title page.He resigned from the Home Guard on medical grounds.

In November 1943, Orwell was appointed literary editor atTribune,where his assistant was his friendJon Kimche.Orwell was on the staff until early 1945, writing over 80 book reviewsand on 3 December 1943 started his regular personal column, "As I Please".He was still writing reviews for other magazines, includingPartisan Review,Horizon,and the New YorkNation.By April 1944Animal Farmwas ready for publication. Gollancz refused to publish it, considering it an attack on theSoviet regimewhich was a crucial ally in the war. A similar fate was met from other publishers, includingT. S. EliotatFaber & Faber,untilJonathan Capeagreed to take it.

In May the Orwells had the opportunity to adopt a child, thanks to the contacts of Eileen's sister-in-law Gwen O'Shaughnessy,then a doctor inNewcastle upon Tyne.In June aV-1 flying bombstruck Mortimer Crescent and the Orwells had to find somewhere else to live. Orwell had to scrabble around in the rubble for his books, which he had finally managed to transfer from Wallington, carting them away in a wheelbarrow. Another blow was Cape's reversal of his plan to publishAnimal Farm.The decision followed his visit toPeter Smollett,an official at theMinistry of Information.Smollett was later identified as a Soviet agent.

The Orwells spent time in the North East, nearCarlton, County Durham,dealing with the adoption of a boy whom they namedRichard Horatio Blair.By September 1944 they had set up home inIslington,at 27bCanonbury Square.Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up her work at the Ministry of Food to look after her family.Secker & Warburghad agreed to publishAnimal Farm,planned for the following March, although it did not appear in print until August 1945. By February 1945 David Astor had invited Orwell to become a war correspondent forThe Observer.He went to liberated Paris, then to Germany and Austria, to such cities asCologneandStuttgart.He was never in the front line, under fire, but followed the troops closely, "sometimes entering a captured town within a day of its fall while dead bodies lay in the streets."Some of his reports were published in theManchester Evening News.

While he was there, Eileen went into hospital for ahysterectomyand died under anaesthetic on 29 March 1945. She had not given Orwell much notice about the operation because of worries about the cost, and because she expected to make a speedy recovery. Orwell returned home and then went back to Europe. He returned to London to cover the1945 general electionat the beginning of July.Animal Farm: A Fairy Storywas published in Britain on 17 August 1945, and a year later in the US, on 26 August 1946.

Jura andNineteen Eighty-Four

Animal Farmhad particular resonance in the post-war climate and its worldwide success made Orwell a sought-after figure. For the next four years, Orwell mixed journalistic work—mainly forTribune,The Observerand theManchester Evening News,though he also contributed to many small-circulation political andliterary magazines—with writing his best-known work,Nineteen Eighty-Four,which was published in 1949. He was a leading figure in the so-called Shanghai Club (named after a restaurant in Soho) of left-leaning and émigré journalists, among themE. H. Carr,Sebastian Haffner,Isaac Deutscher,Barbara WardandJon Kimche.

Barnhillfarmhouse on the Isle ofJura,Scotland. Orwell completedNineteen Eighty-Fourwhile living here.

In the year following Eileen's death he published around 130 articles and a selection of hisCritical Essays,while remaining active in various political lobbying campaigns. He employed a housekeeper, Susan Watson, to look after his adopted son at theIslingtonflat, which visitors now described as "bleak". In September he spent a fortnight on the island ofJurain theInner Hebridesand saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of London literary life. David Astor was instrumental in arranging a place for Orwell on Jura.Astor's family owned Scottish estates in the area and a fellow Old Etonian, Robin Fletcher, had a property on the island. In late 1945 and early 1946 Orwell made several hopeless and unwelcome marriage proposals to younger women, includingCelia Kirwan;Ann Popham, who happened to live in the same block of flats; andSonia Brownell,one of Connolly's coterie at theHorizonoffice. Orwell suffered a tubercular haemorrhage in February 1946 but disguised his illness. In 1945 or early 1946, while still living at Canonbury Square, Orwell wrote an article on "British Cookery", complete with recipes, commissioned by theBritish Council.Given the post-war shortages, both parties agreed not to publish it.His sister Marjorie died in May.

On 22 May 1946, Orwell set off to live on Jura inBarnhill,an abandoned farmhouse without outbuildings.Conditions at the farmhouse were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving the place appealed to Orwell. Orwell returned to London in late 1946 and picked up his literary journalism again. Now a well-known writer, he was swamped with work. Apart from a visit to Jura in the new year he stayed in London forone of the coldest British winters on recordand with such a national shortage of fuel that he burnt his furniture and his child's toys. The heavy smog in the days before theClean Air Act 1956did little to help his health, about which he was reticent, keeping clear of medical attention. Meanwhile, he had to cope with rival claims of publishers Gollancz and Warburg for publishing rights. About this time he co-edited a collection titledBritish PamphleteerswithReginald Reynolds.As a result of the success ofAnimal Farm,Orwell was expecting a large bill from theInland Revenueand he contacted a firm of accountants. The firm advised Orwell to establish a company to own his copyright and to receive his royalties and set up a "service agreement" so that he could draw a salary. Such a company, "George Orwell Productions Ltd" (GOP Ltd) was set up on 12 September 1947.

Orwell left London for Jura on 10 April 1947.In July he ended the lease on the Wallington cottage.Back on Jura he worked onNineteen Eighty-Four.During that time his sister's family visited, and Orwell led a disastrous boating expedition, on 19 August,which nearly led to loss of life whilst trying to cross the notoriousGulf of Corryvreckanand gave him a soaking which was not good for his health. In December a chest specialist was summoned from Glasgow who pronounced Orwell seriously ill, and a week before Christmas 1947 he was inHairmyres Hospital.Tuberculosiswas diagnosed and the request for permission to importstreptomycinto treat Orwell went as far asAneurin Bevan,then Minister of Health.David Astorhelped with supply and payment and Orwell began his course of streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948.By the end of July 1948 Orwell was able to return to Jura and by December he had finished the manuscript ofNineteen Eighty-Four.In January 1949, in a very weak condition, he set off for a sanatorium atCranham, Gloucestershire.Unluckily for Orwell, streptomycin could not be continued, as he developed toxic epidermal necrolysis, a rare side effect.

One of theAnimal Farmcartoon strips produced for the Cold War anti-communist department of the British Foreign Office, theIRD

The sanatorium at Cranham consisted of a series of small wooden chalets or huts in a remote part of theCotswoldsnearStroud.Visitors were shocked by Orwell's appearance and concerned by the shortcomings and ineffectiveness of the treatment. Friends were worried about his finances, but by now he was comparatively well off. He was writing to many of his friends, including Jacintha Buddicom, who had "rediscovered" him, and in March 1949, was visited by Celia Kirwan. Kirwan had just started working for aForeign Officeunit, theInformation Research Department(IRD), set up by theLabourgovernment to publishanti-communistpropaganda, and Orwell gave her a list of people he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings.Orwell's list,not published until 2003, consisted mainly of writers but also included actors and Labour MPs.To further promoteAnimal Farm,the IRD commissioned cartoon strips, drawn byNorman Pett,to be placed in newspapers across the globe.Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and improved slightly. This repeat dose of streptomycin, especially after the side effect had been noticed, has been called "ill-advised".He then received penicillin, although doctors knew it was ineffective against tuberculosis. It is presumed it was given to treat his bronchiectasis.In June 1949Nineteen Eighty-Fourwas published, to critical acclaim.

Final months and death

University College Hospitalin London where Orwell died

Orwell's health continued to decline. In mid-1949, he courtedSonia Brownell,and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was removed toUniversity College Hospitalin London. She is believed to be the model forJulia,the heroine ofNineteen Eighty-Four.Sonia took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended him diligently in the hospital. Friends of Orwell stated that Brownell helped him through the painful last months of his life and, according toAnthony Powell,cheered Orwell up greatly.However, others have argued that she may have been attracted to him primarily because of his fame.

In September 1949, Orwell invited his accountant Jack Harrison to visit him at the hospital, and Harrison claimed that Orwell then asked him to become director of GOP Ltd and to manage the company, but there was no independent witness.Orwell's wedding took place in the hospital room on 13 October 1949, with David Astor as best man.Further meetings were held with his accountant, at which Harrison and Mr and Mrs Blair were confirmed as directors of the company.Orwell's health was in decline again by Christmas. Jack Harrison visited later and claimed that Orwell gave him 25% of the company.Early on the morning of 21 January, an artery burst in Orwell's lungs, killing him at the age of 46.

Orwell's grave inAll Saints'parish churchyard,Sutton Courtenay,Oxfordshire

Orwell had requested to be buried in accordance with the Anglican rite in the graveyard of the closest church to wherever he happened to die. The graveyards in central London had no space, and so in an effort to ensure his last wishes could be fulfilled, his widow appealed to his friends to see whether any of them knew of a church with space in its graveyard. David Astor arranged for Orwell to be interred in the churchyard ofAll Saints'inSutton Courtenay.The funeral was organised by Anthony Powell and Malcom Muggeridge. Powell chose the hymns: "All people that on earth do dwell","Guide me, O thou great Redeemer"and" Ten thousand times ten thousand ".

Orwell's adopted son,Richard Horatio Blair,was brought up by Orwell's sister Avril, his legal guardian, and her husband, Bill Dunn.

In 1979, Sonia Brownell brought aHigh Courtaction against Harrison when he declared an intention to subdivide his 25 per cent share of the company between his three children. For Sonia, the consequence of this manoeuvre would have made getting overall control of the company three times more difficult. She was considered to have a strong case, but was becoming increasingly ill and eventually was persuaded to settle out of court on 2 November 1980. She died on 11 December 1980, aged 62.

Literary career and legacy

During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage:Down and Out in Paris and London(describing a period of poverty in these cities),The Road to Wigan Pier(describing the living conditions of the poor innorthern England,andclass divisiongenerally) andHomage to Catalonia.According toIrving Howe,Orwell was "the best English essayist sinceHazlitt,perhaps sinceDr Johnson".

Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successfulAnimal FarmandNineteen Eighty-Four.The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after theRussian Revolutionand the rise ofStalinism;the latter, life undertotalitarian rule.In 1984,Nineteen Eighty-FourandRay Bradbury'sFahrenheit 451were honoured with thePrometheus Awardfor their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again forAnimal Farm.In 2003,Nineteen Eighty-Fourwas listed at number 8 andAnimal Farmat number 46 on the BBC'sThe Big Readpoll.In 2021, readers of theNew York Times Book ReviewratedNineteen Eighty-Fourthird in a list of "The best books of the past 125 years."

Literary influences

In an autobiographical piece that Orwell sent to the editors ofTwentieth Century Authorsin 1940, he wrote:

The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are:Shakespeare,Swift,Fielding,Dickens,Charles Reade,Flaubertand, among modern writers,James Joyce,T. S. EliotandD. H. Lawrence.But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most isW. Somerset Maugham,whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

Elsewhere, Orwell strongly praised the works ofJack London,especially his bookThe Road.Orwell's investigation of poverty inThe Road to Wigan Pierstrongly resembles that of Jack London'sThe People of the Abyss,in which the American journalist disguises himself as an out-of-work sailor to investigate the lives of the poor in London. In his essay "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946) Orwell wrote: "If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly putGulliver's Travelsamong them. "OnH. G. Wellshe wrote, "The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed."

Orwell was an admirer ofArthur Koestlerand became a close friend during the three years that Koestler and his wife Mamain spent at the cottage of Bwlch Ocyn in theVale of Ffestiniog.Orwell reviewed Koestler'sDarkness at Noonfor theNew Statesmanin 1941, saying:

Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of brilliant literature, it is probably most valuable as an interpretation of the Moscow "confessions" by someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods. What was frightening about these trials was not the fact that they happened—for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society—but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to justify them.

Other writers Orwell admired includedRalph Waldo Emerson,George Gissing,Graham Greene,Herman Melville,Henry Miller,Tobias Smollett,Mark Twain,Joseph Conrad,andYevgeny Zamyatin.He was both an admirer and a critic ofRudyard Kipling,praising Kipling as a gifted writer and a "good bad poet" whose work is "spurious" and "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting," but undeniably seductive and able to speak to certain aspects of reality more effectively than more enlightened authors.He had a similarly ambivalent attitude toG. K. Chesterton,whom he regarded as a writer of considerable talent who had chosen to devote himself to "Roman Catholic propaganda",and toEvelyn Waugh,who was, he wrote, "about as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions".

Literary critic

Throughout his life Orwell continually supported himself as a book reviewer. His reviews are well known and have had an influence on literary criticism. He wrote in the conclusion to his 1940 essay onCharles Dickens,

"When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly withSwift,withDefoe,withFielding,Stendhal,Thackeray,Flaubert,though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry—in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls. "

George Woodcocksuggested that the last two sentences also describe Orwell.

Orwell wrote a critique ofGeorge Bernard Shaw's playArms and the Man.He considered this Shaw's best play and the most likely to remain socially relevant. His 1945 essayIn Defence of P.G. Wodehouseargues that his broadcasts from Germany during the war did not really make him a traitor. He accusedThe Ministry of Informationof exaggerating Wodehouse's actions for propaganda purposes.

Food writing

In 1946, theBritish Councilcommissioned Orwell to write an essay on British food as part of a drive to promote British relations abroad.In his essay titled "British Cookery", Orwell described the British diet as "a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet" and where "hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day".He wrote thathigh tea in the United Kingdomconsisted of a variety of savoury and sweet dishes, but "no tea would be considered a good one if it did not include at least one kind of cake", before adding "as well as cakes,biscuitsare much eaten at tea-time ".Orwell included his own recipe formarmalade,a popular British spread on toast.However, the British Council declined to publish the essay on the grounds that it was too problematic to write about food at the time ofstrict rationing in the UKfollowing the war. In 2019, the essay was discovered in the British Council's archives along with the rejection letter. The British Council issued an official apology to Orwell over the rejection of the commissioned essay, publishing the original essay along with the rejection letter.

Reception and evaluations of Orwell's works

Production of the play1984at thePlayhouse Theatrein theWest End.Orwell's works have been adapted for stage, screen and television. They have also inspired commercials and songs, and he is often quoted. Historian John Rodden called him a "cultural icon".

Arthur Koestler said that Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty made him appear almost inhuman at times".Ben Wattenbergstated: "Orwell's writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it".According to historianPiers Brendon,"Orwell was the saint of common decency who would in earlier days, said his BBC BossRushbrook Williams,'have been either canonised—or burnt at the stake'".Raymond WilliamsinPolitics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Reviewdescribes Orwell as a "successful impersonation of a plain man who bumps into experience in an unmediated way and tells the truth about it".Christopher Norrisdeclared that Orwell's "homespun empiricist outlook—his assumption that the truth was just there to be told in a straightforward common-sense way—now seems not merely naïve but culpably self-deluding".The American scholar Scott Lucas has described Orwell as an enemy of the Left.John Newsinger has argued that Lucas could only do this by portraying "all of Orwell's attacks on Stalinism [–] as if they were attacks on socialism, despite Orwell's continued insistence that they were not".

Orwell's work has taken a prominent place in the school literature curriculum in England,withAnimal Farma regular examination topic at the end of secondary education (GCSE), andNineteen Eighty-Foura topic for subsequent examinations below university level (A Levels). A 2016 UK poll sawAnimal Farmranked the nation's favourite book from school.

Historian John Rodden stated: "John Podhoretzdid claim that if Orwell were alive today, he'd be standing with theneo-conservativesand against the Left. And the question arises, to what extent can you even begin to predict the political positions of somebody who's been dead three decades and more by that time? "

John Rodden points out the "undeniable conservative features in the Orwell physiognomy" and remarks on how "to some extent Orwell facilitated the kinds of uses and abuses by the Right that his name has been put to. In other ways there has been the politics of selective quotation."Rodden refers to the essay "Why I Write",in which Orwell refers to the Spanish Civil War as being his "watershed political experience", saying: "The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectlyagainsttotalitarianism andfordemocratic socialism as I understand it. "(emphasis in original)Rodden goes on to explain how, during the McCarthy era, the introduction to the Signet edition ofAnimal Farmmakes use of selective quotation:

"[Introduction]: If the book itself,Animal Farm,had left any doubt of the matter, Orwell dispelled it in his essayWhy I Write:'Every line of serious work that I've written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism....'
[Rodden]: dot, dot, dot, dot, the politics of ellipsis. 'For Democratic Socialism' is vaporized, just like Winston Smith did it at the Ministry of Truth, and that's very much what happened at the beginning of the McCarthy era and just continued, Orwell being selectively quoted. "

Fyvel wrote about Orwell:

His crucial experience [...] was his struggle to turn himself into a writer, one which led through long periods of poverty, failure and humiliation, and about which he has written almost nothing directly. The sweat and agony was less in the slum-life than in the effort to turn the experience into literature.

Conversely, historianIsaac Deutscherwas far more critical of Orwell from aMarxistperspective and characterised him as a "simple mindedanarchist".Deutscher argued that Orwell had struggled to comprehend the dialectical philosophy of Marxism, demonstrated personal ambivalence towardsother strands of socialismand his works such asNineteen Eighty-Fourhad been appropriated for the purpose ofanti-communistCold Warpropaganda.

Influence on language and writing

In his essay "Politics and the English Language"(1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation. In that essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell worked as a journalist atThe Observerfor seven years, and its editorDavid Astorgave a copy of this celebrated essay to every new recruit.In 2003, literary editor at the newspaperRobert McCrumwrote, "Even now, it is quoted in our style book".JournalistJonathan Heawoodnoted: "Orwell's criticism of slovenly language is still taken very seriously."

Andrew N. Rubin argues that "Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use."

The adjective "Orwellian"connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth and manipulation of the past. InNineteen Eighty-Four,Orwell described a totalitarian government that controlled thought by controlling language, making certain ideas literally unthinkable. Several words and phrases fromNineteen Eighty-Fourhave entered popular language. "Newspeak"is a simplified and obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible."Doublethink"means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The"Thought Police"are those who suppress all dissenting opinion."Prolefeed"is homogenised, manufactured superficial literature, film and music used to control and indoctrinate the populace through docility."Big Brother"is a supreme dictator who watches everyone. Otherneologismsfrom the novel include, "Two Minutes Hate","Room 101","memory hole","unperson",and"thoughtcrime",as well as providing direct inspiration for the neologism "groupthink".

Orwell may have been the first to use the term "cold war"in his essay," You and the Atom Bomb ", published inTribuneon 19 October 1945. He wrote:

"We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—this is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours. "

Modern culture

Selection of publications bythe Orwell Society

TheOrwell Societywas formed in 2011 to promote understanding of the life and work of Orwell. A registered UK charity, it was founded and inaugurated byDione VenablesatPhyllis Courtmembers club inHenley-on-Thames,Oxfordshire, a club that was often visited by Orwell in his youth.

Apart from theatre adaptations of his books, several works were written with Orwell as one of the main characters.

• In 2012, a musical play,One Georgie Orwell,by Peter Cordwell and Carl Picton was performed at theGreenwich Theatre,London. It explored Orwell's life, his concerns for the world that he lived in, and for the Britain that he loved.
• In 2014, a play written by playwrightJoe SuttontitledOrwell in Americawas first performed by the Northern Stage theatre company in White River Junction, Vermont. It is a fictitious account of Orwell doing a book tour in the United States (something he never did in his lifetime). It moved tooff-Broadwayin 2016.
• In 2017,Mrs Orwellby British playwright Tony Cox opened at theOld Red Lion Theatrein London before transferring to theSouthwark Playhouse.The play centres on Orwell's second wife Sonia Brownell (played byCressida Bonas), her reasons for marrying Orwell and her relationship with Lucian Freud.
• In 2019, Tasmanian theatre company Blue Cow presented the play101by Cameron Hindrum,in which Orwell is seen working on his novel1984"while keeping his severe illness at bay and balancing the demands of fatherhood, art, family and success."
• Orwell is the main character in a 2017 novel,The Last Man in Europe,by Australian authorDennis Glover.

• The young Eric Blair is the main character inPaul Theroux's2024 novelBurma Sahib,a fictional narrative of Blair's five years in the country.

Orwell's birthplace, abungalowinMotihari,Bihar, India, was opened as a museum in May 2015.

Archive

In 1960 Orwell's widow Sonia deposited his papers on permanent loan toUniversity College London.The collection contains Orwell's literary notebooks, manuscripts and typescripts of his work, personal and political diaries, correspondence and family material.Since the initial donation the papers - now known as the George Orwell Archive - have been supplemented by further donations from family, friends and business associates.Orwell's son Richard Blair has purchased additional material for the collection since its inception; in 2023 Blair was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from University College London for his contributions.

University College London also holds an extensive collection of Orwell's books, including rare and early editions of his works, translations into other languages and titles from his own library.

Statue

Statue of George OrwelloutsideBroadcasting House,headquarters of theBBC

Astatue of George Orwell,sculpted by the British sculptorMartin Jennings,was unveiled on 7 November 2017 outsideBroadcasting House,the headquarters of the BBC.The wall behind the statue is inscribed with the following phrase: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear". These are words from his proposed preface toAnimal Farmand a rallying cry for the idea of free speech in an open society.

Personal life

Childhood

Jacintha Buddicom's account,Eric & Us,provides an insight into Blair's childhood.She quoted his sister Avril that "he was essentially an aloof, undemonstrative person" and said herself of his friendship with the Buddicoms: "I do not think he needed any other friends beyond the schoolfriend he occasionally and appreciatively referred to as 'CC'". She could not recall him having schoolfriends to stay and exchange visits as her brother Prosper often did in holidays.Cyril Connollyprovides an account of Blair as a child inEnemies of Promise.Years later, Blair mordantly recalled his prep school in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys",claiming among other things that he" was made to study like a dog "to earn a scholarship. Jacintha Buddicom repudiated Orwell's schoolboy misery described in the essay, stating that" he was a specially happy child ". She noted that he did not like his name because it reminded him of a book he greatly disliked—Eric, or, Little by Little,a Victorian boys' school story.

Orwell's time at Eton College was formative in his attitude and his later career as a writer.

Connolly remarked of him as a schoolboy, "The remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself".At Eton,John Vaughan Wilkes,his former headmaster's son at St Cyprians, recalled that "he was extremely argumentative—about anything—and criticising the masters and criticising the other boys [...] We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments—or think he had anyhow."

Blair liked to carry out practical jokes. Buddicom recalls him swinging from the luggage rack in a railway carriage like an orangutan to frighten a woman passenger out of the compartment.At Eton, he played tricks on John Crace, hishousemaster,among which was to enter a spoof advertisement in a college magazine implying pederasty.Gow, his tutor, said he "made himself as big a nuisance as he could" and "was a very unattractive boy".Later Blair was expelled from thecrammerat Southwold for sending a dead rat as a birthday present to the town surveyor.

Blair had an interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies,and Buddicom recalls his keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehogor shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it.His zeal for scientific experiments extended to explosives—again Buddicom recalls a cook giving notice because of the noise. Later in Southwold, his sister Avril recalled him blowing up the garden. When teaching he enthused his students with his nature-rambles both at Southwoldand at Hayes.His adult diaries are permeated with his observations on nature.

Relationships and marriage

Blair’s adolescent idyll with Buddicom was shattered in the summer of 1921, when he attempted to take their relationship further than Buddicom was ready for, in what was characterised as abotched seduction.When Blair left for Burma the following year, he wrote to Buddicom but she soon stopped replying to his letters.Returning from Burma in 1927, Blair went in search of Buddicom at her family home to ask her to marry him but she was nowhere to be seen.What had beena very serious business indeedfor Blair had apparently been dismissed by Buddicom, leaving Blair potentially emotionally vulnerable.Buddicom and Blair revisited those memories briefly in 1949 in three letters and three telephone calls but without closure.

Mabel Fierz, who later became Blair's confidante, said: "He used to say the one thing he wished in this world was that he'd been attractive to women. He liked women and had many girlfriends I think in Burma. He had a girl in Southwold and another girl in London. He was rather a womaniser, yet he was afraid he wasn't attractive."

Brenda Salkield (Southwold) preferred friendship to any deeper relationship and maintained a correspondence with Blair for many years, particularly as a sounding board for his ideas. She wrote: "He was a great letter writer. Endless letters, and I mean when he wrote you a letter he wrote pages."His correspondence with Eleanor Jacques (London) was more prosaic, dwelling on a closer relationship and referring to past rendezvous or planning future ones in London andBurnham Beeches.

Orwell's adopted sonRichardin 2018 reciting his father's work at his graveside during an annual visit to All Saints' churchyard, Sutton Courtenay

When Orwell was in the sanatorium in Kent, his wife Eileen's friend Lydia Jackson visited. He invited her for a walk and out of sight "an awkward situation arose."Jackson was to be the most critical of Orwell's marriage to Eileen, but their later correspondence hints at a complicity. At the time Eileen was more concerned about Orwell's closeness to Brenda Salkield. Orwell had an affair with his secretary atTribunewhich caused Eileen much distress, and others have been mooted. In a letter to Ann Popham he wrote: "I was sometimes unfaithful to Eileen, and I also treated her badly, and I think she treated me badly, too, at times, but it was a real marriage, in the sense that we had been through awful struggles together and she understood all about my work, etc."Similarly he suggested to Celia Kirwan that they had both been unfaithful.There are several testaments that it was a well-matched and happy marriage.

In June 1944, Orwell and Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy they namedRichard Horatio.According to Richard, Orwell was a wonderful father who gave him devoted, if rather rugged, attention and a great degree of freedom.

Orwell was very lonely after Eileen's death in 1945 and was desperate for a wife, both as companion for himself and as mother for Richard. He proposed marriage to four women, including Celia Kirwan, and eventuallySonia Brownellaccepted.Orwell had met her when she was assistant to Cyril Connolly, atHorizonliterary magazine.They were married on 13 October 1949, only three months before Orwell's death. Some maintain that Sonia was the model for Julia inNineteen Eighty-Four.

Social interactions

Orwell was noted for very close and enduring friendships with a few friends, but these were generally people with a similar background or with a similar level of literary ability. Ungregarious, he was out of place in a crowd and his discomfort was exacerbated when he was outside his own class. Though representing himself as a spokesman for the common man, he often appeared out of place with real working people. His brother-in-law Humphrey Dakin, a"Hail fellow, well met"type, who took him to a local pub in Leeds, said that he was told by the landlord: "Don't bring that bugger in here again."Adrian Fierz commented "He wasn't interested in racing or greyhounds or pub crawling orshove ha'penny.He just did not have much in common with people who did not share his intellectual interests. "Awkwardness attended many of his encounters with working-class representatives, as with Pollitt and McNair,but his courtesy and good manners were often commented on.Jack Commonobserved on meeting him for the first time, "Right away manners, and more than manners—breeding—showed through."

In his tramping days, he did domestic work for a time. His extreme politeness was recalled by a member of the family he worked for; she declared that the family referred to him as "Laurel"after the film comedian.With his gangling figure and awkwardness, Orwell's friends often saw him as a figure of fun.Geoffrey Gorercommented "He was awfully likely to knock things off tables, trip over things. I mean, he was a gangling, physically badly co-ordinated young man. I think his feeling [was] that even the inanimate world was against him."At the BBC in the 1940s, "everybody would pull his leg"and Spender described him as having real entertainment value "like, as I say, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie".A friend of Eileen's reminisced about her tolerance and humour, often at Orwell's expense.

One biography of Orwell accused him of having had an authoritarian streak.One of his former pupils recalledbeing beatenso hard he could not sit down for a week.When sharing a flat with Orwell, Heppenstall came home late one night in an advanced stage of loud inebriation. The upshot was that Heppenstall ended up with a bloody nose and was locked in a room. When he complained, Orwell hit him across the legs with ashooting stickand Heppenstall then had to defend himself with a chair. Years later, after Orwell's death, Heppenstall wrote a dramatic account of the incident called "The Shooting Stick".

Orwell got on well with young people. The pupil he beat considered him the best of teachers and the young recruits in Barcelona tried to drink him under the table without success.

In the wake of his most famous works, he attracted many uncritical hangers-on, but many others who sought him found him aloof and even dull. With his soft voice, he was sometimes shouted down or excluded from discussions.At this time, he was severely ill; it was wartime or the austerity period after it; during the war his wife suffered from depression; and after her death he was lonely and unhappy. In addition to that, he always lived frugally and seemed unable to care for himself properly. As a result of all this, people found his circumstances bleak.Some, likeMichael Ayrton,called him "Gloomy George", but others developed the idea that he was an "Englishsecular saint".

Lifestyle

Orwell was a heavy smoker, who rolled his own cigarettes from strongshag tobacco,despite his bronchial condition. His penchant for the rugged life often took him to cold and damp situations. Described byThe Economistas "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler ofEnglish culture",Orwell consideredfish and chips,football,thepub,strong tea, cut-price chocolate,the movies,and radio among the chief comforts for the working class.He advocated a patriotic defence of a British way of life that could not be trusted to intellectuals or, by implication, the state:

"We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official—the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the" nice cup of tea ". The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above."

"By putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk, whereas one is likely to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round"

— One of Orwell's eleven rules for making tea from his essay "A Nice Cup of Tea"which appeared in theLondon Evening Standard,12 January 1946

Orwell enjoyed strong tea—he hadFortnum & Mason's tea brought to him in Catalonia.His 1946 essay, "A Nice Cup of Tea",appeared in theLondon Evening Standardarticle on how tomake tea.He appreciated English beer, taken regularly and moderately, despised drinkers oflager,and wrote about an imagined, idealBritish pubin his 1946Evening Standardarticle, "The Moon Under Water".Not as particular about food, he enjoyed the wartime "Victory Pie"and extolled canteen food at the BBC.He preferred traditional English dishes, such asroast beef,andkippers.

His dress sense was unpredictable and usually casual.In Southwold, he had the best cloth from the local tailor,but was equally happy in his tramping outfit. His attire in the Spanish Civil War, along with his size-12 boots, was a source of amusement.David Astor described him as looking like a prep school master,while according to the Special Branch dossier, Orwell's tendency to dress "in Bohemian fashion" revealed that the author was "a Communist".

Orwell's confusing approach to matters of social decorum—on the one hand expecting a working-class guest to dress for dinnerand, on the other, slurping tea out of a saucer at the BBC canteen—helped stoke his reputation as an English eccentric.

Views

Religion

Orwell was an atheist and a robust critic of Christianity. Nevertheless, he was sentimentally attached to church services, and was buried in All Saints' parish churchyard inSutton Courtenay,Oxfordshire.

Orwell was an atheist who identified himself with thehumanistoutlook on life.Despite this, and despite his criticisms of both religious doctrine and religious organisations, he nevertheless regularly participated in the social and civic life of the church, including by attendingChurch of EnglandHoly Communion.Acknowledging this contradiction, he once said: "It seems rather mean to go to HC [Holy Communion] when one doesn't believe, but I have passed myself off for pious & there is nothing for it but to keep up with the deception."He had two Anglican marriages and left instructions for an Anglican funeral.Orwell was also well-read in Biblical literature and could quote lengthy passages from theBook of Common Prayerfrom memory.

His extensive knowledge of theBiblecame coupled with unsparing criticism of its philosophy, and as an adult he could not bring himself to believe in its tenets. He said in part V of his essay, "Such, Such Were the Joys",that" Till about the age of fourteen I believed in God, and believed that the accounts given of him were true. But I was well aware that I did not love him. "Orwell directly contrasted Christianity withsecular humanismin his essay "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool",finding the latter philosophy more palatable and less" self-interested ". Literary criticJames Woodwrote that in the struggle, as he saw it, between Christianity andhumanism,"Orwell was on the humanist side, of course".

Orwell's writing was often explicitly critical of religion, and Christianity in particular. He found the church to be a "selfish [...] church of thelanded gentry"with its establishment" out of touch "with the majority of its communicants and altogether a pernicious influence on public life.His contradictory and sometimes ambiguous views about the social benefits of religious affiliation mirrored the dichotomies between his public and private lives: Stephen Ingle wrote that it was as if the writer George Orwell "vaunted" his unbelief while Eric Blair the individual retained "a deeply ingrained religiosity".

Politics

Orwell liked to provoke arguments by challenging the status quo, but he was also atraditionalistwith a love of old English values. He criticised and satirised, from the inside, the various social milieux in which he found himself. In hisAdelphidays, he described himself as a "Tory-anarchist".OfcolonialisminBurmese Days,he portrays theEnglish colonistsas a "dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets."Writing forLe Progrès Civique,Orwell described theBritish colonial governmentin Burma and India:

"The government of all the Indian provinces under the control of theBritish Empireis of necessity despotic, because only the threat of force can subdue a population of several million subjects. But thisdespotismis latent. It hides behind a mask of democracy... Care is taken to avoid technical and industrial training. This rule, observed throughout India, aims to stop India from becoming an industrial country capable of competing with England... Foreign competition is prevented by an insuperable barrier of prohibitive customs tariffs. And so the English factory-owners, with nothing to fear, control the markets absolutely and reap exorbitant profits. "

Orwell joined the BritishIndependent Labour Partyduring his time in theSpanish Civil Warand became a defender ofdemocratic socialismand a critic oftotalitarianismfor the rest of his life.

The Spanish Civil War played the most important part in defining Orwell's socialism. He wrote to Cyril Connolly from Barcelona on 8 June 1937: "I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before."Having witnessedanarcho-syndicalistcommunities and the subsequent brutal suppression of the anarcho-syndicalists, anti-Stalin communist parties and revolutionaries by the Soviet Union-backed Communists, Orwell returned from Catalonia a staunch anti-Stalinistand joined the BritishIndependent Labour Party.

In Part 2 ofThe Road to Wigan Pier,published by theLeft Book Club,Orwell stated that "a real Socialist is one who wishes—not merely conceives it as desirable, but actively wishes—to see tyranny overthrown". Orwell stated in "Why I Write" (1946): "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, againsttotalitarianismand fordemocratic socialism,as I understand it. "Orwell's conception of socialism was of a planned economy alongside democracy.Orwell was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay "Toward European Unity",which first appeared inPartisan Review.According to biographerJohn Newsinger:

"The other crucial dimension to Orwell's socialism was his recognition that the Soviet Union was not socialist. Unlike many on the left, instead of abandoning socialism once he discovered the full horror of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union, Orwell abandoned the Soviet Union and instead remained a socialist—indeed he became more committed to the socialist cause than ever."

Orwell was opposed to rearmament againstNazi Germanyand at the time of theMunich Agreementhe signed a manifesto entitled "If War Comes We Shall Resist"—but he changed his view after theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pactand the outbreak of the war. He left the ILP because of its opposition to the war and adopted a political position of "revolutionary patriotism". On 21 March 1940 he wrote a review ofAdolf Hitler'sMein KampfforThe New English Weekly,in which he analysed the dictator's psychology. Asking "how was it that he was able to put [his] monstrous vision across?", Orwell tried to understand why Hitler was worshipped by the German people:

The situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing ofMein Kampf,and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches...The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim,Prometheuschained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.

In December 1940 he wrote inTribune(the Labour left's weekly): "We are in a strange period of history in which arevolutionaryhas to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary. "During the war, Orwell was highly critical of the popular idea that an Anglo-Soviet alliance would be the basis of a post-war world of peace and prosperity.In his reply (dated 15 November 1943) to an invitation from theDuchess of Athollto speak for the British League for European Freedom, he stated that he could not "associate himself with an essentially Conservative body" that claimed to "defend democracy in Europe" but had "nothing to say aboutBritish imperialism".His closing paragraph stated:" I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russiantotalitarianismand its poisonous influence in this country. "

Orwell joined the staff ofTribunemagazine as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supportingdemocratic socialist.On 1 September 1944, writing about theWarsaw uprising,Orwell expressed inTribunehis hostility against the influence of the alliance with the USSR over the allies: "Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Do not imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-lickingpropagandistof the sovietic regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to honesty and reason. Once a whore, always a whore. "According to Newsinger, although Orwell "was always critical of the 1945–51 Labour government's moderation, his support for it began to pull him to the right politically. This did not lead him to embrace conservatism,imperialismor reaction, but to defend, albeit critically, Labour reformism. " Special Branch,the intelligence division of theMetropolitan Police,maintained a file on Orwell for more than 20 years of his life. The dossier, published byThe National Archives,states that, according to one investigator, Orwell had "advanced Communist views and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings".MI5,the intelligence department of theHome Office,noted: "It is evident from his recent writings—'The Lion and the Unicorn'—and his contribution to Gollancz's symposiumThe Betrayal of the Leftthat he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him. "

Sexuality

Sexual politics plays an important role inNineteen Eighty-Four.In the novel, people's intimate relationships are strictly governed by the party'sJunior Anti-Sex League,by opposing sexual relations and instead encouragingartificial insemination.Personally, Orwell disliked what he thought as misguided middle-class revolutionaryemancipatoryviews, expressing disdain for "every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniacs".

Orwell was also openly againsthomosexuality.Daphne Pataisaid: "Of course he was homophobic. That has nothing to do with his relations with his homosexual friends. Certainly, he had a negative attitude and a certain kind of anxiety, a denigrating attitude towards homosexuality. That is definitely the case. I think his writing reflects that quite fully."

Orwell used thehomophobicepithets"nancy" and "pansy", for example, in expressions of contempt for what he called the "pansy Left".The protagonist ofKeep the Aspidistra Flying,Gordon Comstock, conducts an internal critique of his customers when working in a bookshop, and there is an extended passage of several pages in which he concentrates on a homosexual male customer, and sneers at him for his "nancy" characteristics, including alisp.Stephen Spender "thought Orwell's occasional homophobic outbursts were part of his rebellion against the public school".

Biographies

Orwell's will requested that nobiographyof him be written, and hiswidow,Sonia Brownell, repelled every attempt by those who tried to persuade her to let them write about him. Various recollections and interpretations were published in the 1950s and 1960s, but Sonia saw the 1968Collected Worksas the record of his life. She did appointMalcolm Muggeridgeas official biographer, but later biographers have seen this as deliberate spoiling as Muggeridge eventually gave up the work.In 1972, two American authors, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, producedThe Unknown Orwell,an unauthorised account of his early years that lacked any support or contribution from Sonia Brownell.

Sonia Brownell then commissionedBernard Crickto complete a biography and asked Orwell's friends to co-operate.Crick collated a considerable amount of material in his work, which was published in 1980,but his questioning of the factual accuracy of Orwell's first-person writings led to conflict with Brownell, and she tried to suppress the book. Crick concentrated on the facts of Orwell's life rather than his character, and presented primarily a political perspective.

After Sonia Brownell's death, other works on Orwell were published in the 1980s, particularly in 1984. These included collections of reminiscences by Audrey Coppard and Crickand Stephen Wadhams.In 1991,Michael Sheldenpublished a biography.More concerned with the literary nature of Orwell's work, he sought explanations for Orwell's character and treated his first-person writings asautobiographical.Shelden introduced new information that sought to build on Crick's work.

Peter Davison's publication of theComplete Works of George Orwell,completed in 2000,made most of the Orwell Archive accessible to the public. Jeffrey Meyers, a prolific American biographer, was first to take advantage of this and published a book in 2001 that investigated the darker side of Orwell and questioned his saintly image.Why Orwell Matters(released in the UK asOrwell's Victory) was published byChristopher Hitchensin 2002.

In 2003, the centenary of Orwell's birth resulted in biographies byGordon BowkerandD. J. Taylor.Taylor notes the stage management which surrounds much of Orwell's behaviourand Bowker highlights the essential sense of decency which he considers to have been Orwell's main motivation.An updated edition of Taylor's biography was released in 2023 asOrwell: The New Life,published by Constable.

In 2018, Ronald Binns published the first detailed study of Orwell's years in Suffolk,Orwell in Southwold.In 2020, Richard Bradford wrote a new biography,Orwell: A Man of Our Time,while in 2021Rebecca Solnitreflected on Orwell's interest in gardening in her bookOrwell's Roses.

Two books about Orwell's relationship with his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, and her role in his life and career, have been published:Eileen: The Making of George Orwellby Sylvia Topp (2020)andWifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible LifebyAnna Funder(2023).In her book Funder claims that Orwell was misogynistic and sadistic. This sparked a strong controversy among Orwell's biographers, particularly with Topp. Celia Kirwan's family also intervened in the discussion, believing that the attribution to their relative of a relationship with Orwell, as stated by Funder, is false. The publishing house ofWifedomwas forced to remove that reference from the book.

Bibliography

Main article:George Orwell bibliography

Novels

• 1934 –Burmese Days
• 1935 –A Clergyman's Daughter
• 1936 –Keep the Aspidistra Flying
• 1939 –Coming Up for Air
• 1945 –Animal Farm
• 1949 –Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nonfiction

• 1933 –Down and Out in Paris and London
• 1937 –The Road to Wigan Pier
• 1938 –Homage to Catalonia

Sources

• Anderson, Paul (ed.).Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings.Methuen/Politico's 2006.ISBN1842751557
• Azurmendi, Joxe(1984): George Orwell. 1984: Reality exists in the human mind,Jakin,32: 87–103.
• Bounds, Philip.Orwell and Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell.I.B. Tauris. 2009.ISBN1845118073
• Bowker,Gordon.George Orwell.Little Brown. 2003.ISBN0316861154
• Buddicom, Jacintha.Eric & Us.Finlay Publisher. 2006.ISBN0955370809
• Caute, David.Dr. Orwell and Mr. Blair,Weidenfeld & Nicolson.ISBN0297814389
• Crick, Bernard.George Orwell: A Life.Penguin. 1982.ISBN0140058567
• Davison, Peter;Angus, Ian; Davison, Sheila (eds.). 2000A Kind of Compulsion.London: Random HouseISBN978-0436205422
• Flynn, Nigel.George Orwell.The Rourke Corporation, Inc. 1990.ISBN086593018X
• Haycock, David Boyd.I Am Spain: The Spanish Civil War and the Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism.Old Street Publishing. 2013.ISBN978-1908699107
• Hitchens, Christopher.Why Orwell Matters.Basic Books. 2003.ISBN0465030491
• Hollis, Christopher.A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works.Chicago: Henry Regnery Co. 1956.
• Larkin, Emma.Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop.Penguin. 2005.ISBN1594200521
• Lee, Robert A.Orwell's Fiction.University of Notre Dame Press, 1969.LCCN74--75151
• Leif, Ruth Ann.Homage to Oceania. The Prophetic Vision of George Orwell.Ohio State U.P. [1969]
• Meyers, Jeffery.Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation.W.W. Norton. 2000.ISBN0393322637
• Newsinger, John.Orwell's Politics.Macmillan. 1999.ISBN0333682874
• Orwell, George,The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters,vol. 1 – An Age Like This 1945–1950, Penguin.
• Rodden, John (1989).George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation(2002 revised ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0765808967.
• Rodden, John (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell.Cambridge. 2007.ISBN978-0521675079
• Shelden, Michael.Orwell: The Authorized Biography.HarperCollins. 1991.ISBN0060167092
• Smith, D. & Mosher, M.Orwell for Beginners.1984. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative.
• Taylor, D. J.Orwell: The Life.Henry Holt and Company. 2003.ISBN0805074732
• West, W. J.The Larger Evils.Edinburgh: Canongate Press. 1992.ISBN0862413826(Nineteen Eighty-Four – The truth behind the satire.)
• West, W. J. (ed.).George Orwell: The Lost Writings.New York: Arbor House. 1984.ISBN0877957452
• Williams, Raymond.Orwell,Fontana/Collins, 1971
• Wood, James. "A Fine Rage."The New Yorker.2009. 85(9):54.
• Woodcock, George.The Crystal Spirit.Little Brown. 1966.ISBN1551642689

Further reading

• Karp, Masha(2023).George Orwell and Russia(1st ed.). United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 312.ISBN978-1788317139.
• Morgan, W. John, 'Pacifism or Bourgeois Pacifism? Huxley, Orwell, and Caudwell'. Chapter 5 in Morgan, W. John and Guilherme, Alexandre (Eds.),Peace and War-Historical, Philosophical, and Anthropological Perspectives,Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp, 71–96.ISBN978-3-030-48670-9.
• Orwell, George.Diaries,edited byPeter Davison(W. W. Norton & Company;2012) 597 pages; annotated edition of 11 diaries kept by Orwell, from August 1931 to September 1949.
• Orwell, George.On Jews and Antisemitism,introduced, edited and annotated by Paul Seeliger (Berlin: Comino; 2022) 304 pages,ISBN978-3-945831-32-8
• Steele, David Ramsay(2008)."Orwell, George (1903–1950)".InHamowy, Ronald(ed.).The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism.Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage;Cato Institute.pp. 366–368.doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n224.ISBN978-1412965804.LCCN2008009151.OCLC750831024.
• Ostrom, Hans and Halton, William.Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in the Age of Pseudocracy(New York: Routledge, 2018)ISBN978-1138499904
• Powell, Anthony. 1977.Infants of the Spring,pp. 91-104. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Venables, DioneGeorge Orwell - The Complete Poetry,introduction byPeter Davidson(Finlay Publisher; 2015)ISBN978-0955370823
• Wilson, S. M. and Huxtable, J."Such, Such Were the Joys: graphic novel"(London: Pluto Press, Sept 2021)ISBN978-0745345925

External links

• Blair, Eric Arthur (George Orwell) (1903–1950) at theOxford Dictionary of National Biography
• George OrwellArchived16 January 2021 at theWayback Machineat theBritish Library
• "George Orwell".Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Works by George OrwellatOpen Library
• Works by or about George Orwellat theInternet Archive
• Works by George OrwellatFaded Page(Canada)
• "Archival material relating to George Orwell".UK National Archives.
• George Orwell archiveatUniversity College London
• Orwell Papersat University College London
• Orwell Collection(rare and early editions of Orwell's works) at University College London