Home / About the Site / Contents / New / Creating Your Own Classic /Authors / Timeline / Tours / Interact! / Search / Children's Corner

George Orwell

George Orwell Home / GO Biography / GO Works /GO Related Links

  George Orwell (what Blair later took for his pen name) was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903, in the village of Motihari, India. His father, Robert, was an agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service (at that time India was still part of the British Empire), just as his father was part of the British Raj and had served in the Indian Army. His mother was Ida Mabel Blair, daughter of a French tradesman, and she was about 18 years younger than her husband. Eric had one older sister, Marjorie. Although the Blairs weren't very wealthy, they led a fairly privileged existence in India. Orwell later described them as "lower-upper-middle class." In 1907, the family moved back to Henley, England. However, Robert Blair continued to work in India until his retirement in 1912. At the age of eight, Eric was sent to a private preparatory school in Sussex. At the age of thirteen, he won a scholarship to Wellington, and soon after that, another scholarship to Eaton, the famous public school. He finished the final examinations of Eaton, 138th out of 167. He failed to win another scholarship to any university so in 1922, he joined the Indian Imperial Police.

  He trained in Burma and served the Indian Imperial Police for five years. In 1927, while home in England on leave, he resigned from the police force for two reasons. First, it was a distraction from his real love-writing, and secondly, he felt he could no longer be part of a political system that he didn't believe in. He wanted to escape British imperialism in India as well as every other "form of man's dominion over man," as he put it-which included the upper classes dominion over the English working class. He resolved to speak out against the domination of any person over another.

  From India, he went back to London and started to write. For a year, he lived among the poor in London, and then in Paris. One reason for living among the poor was to overcome the repulsion which he saw as typical for his own middle class. When he lived in Paris, he lived in a working-class quarter and got a job as a dishwasher. When he returned to London, he again lived with the poor. In December of 1929, he spent Christmas with his family, where he announced he was going to write a book about his life in Paris. In October of 1930, Orwell wrote the original version of Down and Out, then entitled A Scullion's Diary. Then the book only came to 35,000 words. However, after two rejections from publishers, he ordered Mabel Firez to destroy the script and save only the paper clips. But luckily, Mabel took the manuscript to Leonard Monroe, the literary agent of the House Gollancz, and made him read it. Soon, it was accepted, with the condition that names would be changed and swear-words deleted. He complied but he also had a condition. He wanted it published pseudonymously. He said to Victor Gollancz,"I have no reputation that is lost by doing this and if the book has any kind of success, I can always use this pseudonym again." The pseudonym he picked, of course, was George Orwell.

  During that time, he also wrote Burmese Days, a book based on his life as part of the Indian Imperial Police. It was published in 1934. After the revisions were completed on A Scullion's Diary, Orwell's second publication became Down and Out in Paris and London. His next book was A Clergyman's Daughter, in 1935, followed by Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936. In 1936, Orwell also opened a village shop in Wallington, Hertfordshire. Here he did business in the mornings and wrote in the evenings. That same year, he was married to Eileen O'Shaughnessy. Also in 1936, he received a commission from the Left Book Club to examine the conditions of the poor and unemployed. This resulted in his next book, The Road to Wigan Pier. However, the Left Book Club was not very happy with the book because Orwell criticized English socialism (because in his eyes it was mostly unrealistic) as well as the English class system. When the book was published in 1936, it included preface by Victor Gollancz, arguing against many of Orwell's main points.

  After publishing The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell went to Spain. Originally he intended to write newspaper articles on the Civil War which had recently broken out. The conflict was between the communist/socialist Republic and General Franco's Fascist military, who was rebelling. He arrived in Barcelona to find that there was almost no class distinction in Spain-with a shortage of everything there was an equality. Orwell joined the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion de Marxista) militia, which the British Labour Party in association with. For the first time in his life, Orwell found socialism almost a reality, something he was willing to fight for. He was wounded in the throat not long after he joined the army and more than three months later he returned to Barcelona. Unfortunately, he found it a very different city than the one he had visited earlier. The city was returning to class divisions and there was fighting in the streets between different socialist groups. Also, Orwell found that POUM was being accused of actually secretly helping Franco. Orwell escaped to France with his wife and published Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences in Spain, in 1938. Orwell learned two things in Spain: first, socialism in action was possible, if only for a short time and second, there would always be class systems.

  In 1938, Orwell caught tuberculosis, and spent the winter in Morocco, trying to recover. There he wrote Coming Up For Air, published in 1939. Also that year, World War II broke out. Orwell wanted to fight for Britain against the Fascist German enemy but was declared unfit for service. In 1941, he joined the British Broadcasting Corporation as a talks producer in the Indian section of the eastern service. He served in the Home Guard, which was a wartime civilian body for local defense. In 1943, he left the BBC and became literary editor of the Tribune. Animal Farm was written that year. In 1944, the Orwells adopted a son but unfortunately, Orwell's wife died the next year, during an operation. Towards the end of the war, Orwell became a reporter and traveled Europe. In 1946, he settled on the Scottish isle of Jura. There he wrote 1984, however the climate was not good for someone with tuberculosis and he went back to England. Later in 1946, Orwell married Sonia Bronwell, just before his death in January of 1950.

Home / About the Site / Contents / New / Creating Your Own Classic /Authors / Timeline / Tours / Interact! / Search / Children's Corner