George Orwell: A Biography
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell was born in June of 1903 in India, his father worked in the Indian Civil Service. His mother Ida brought her son to England at the age of one. Orwell was educated in England, he entered Eton in 1917 as a King’s Scholar. At Eton he was briefly taught French by Aldous Huxley author of Brave New World, considered by many to be a book similar in theme to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, though there is no evidence their relationship ever went past that of a pupil teacher level.
In 1922 at the age of 19 joined the Indian Imperial Police and served in Burma. It was during this time that Orwell decided imperialism was evil. His novel Burmese Days in 1934 was based upon these experiences, as was his essay Shooting an Elephant. In 1927 while on leave in England he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police.
He spent many of the following years in poverty; during this period he spent a great deal of time in the slums of London and Paris, where he also undertook menial jobs. These years would provide material for his first novel Down and Out in Paris and London published in 1933.
He then took up various teaching positions from 1932 to 1934. However due to ill health he left teaching and then became a part-time assistant at a second-hand bookshop. In 1935 he met his future wife Eileen O’ Shaughnessy, they married the following year.
He was commissioned by Victor Gollancz a radical socialist publisher to investigate social conditions in northern England. His book The Road to Wigan Pier published by Victor Gollancz in 1937 was an account of the poverty he saw in economically depressed northern England.
At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War for the Spanish Republican Government, this was to be a life changing experience. The political situation in Spain was complex and the Republican government was supported by a number of different factions. Orwell due to his connections with the Independent Labour Party in Britain, which was linked with POUM (Partido Obero de Unificación Marxista), found himself fighting for the POUM faction, POUM were an anarchist group within the mainly Communist alliance fighting for the Republican Government. He trained at Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, he was then sent to the quiet Aragon Front. Due to his police training he was made a corporal.
By April 1937 after returning to Barcelona he applied to join the International Brigades, however while there, the fighting by the different factions within the Republican side caught up with him in the month of May. He fought for the anarchists who were fought by the Soviet backed section of the Republican Government. Orwell was greatly affected by the fact that POUM was accused of working with the fascist nationalists and the campaign of lies and distortion of reality that was used against POUM. When asked by a Communist friend after the fighting if he still wanted to join the International Brigades, Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, as the Communist press said he was a fascist. He saw the Soviet backed Communists as having betrayed the Spanish workers’ revolution.
Orwell chose to fight on with POUM and on his return to the front a sniper’s bullet caught him in the throat. He was eventually sent to a POUM sanatorium outside Barcelona. By the middle of June POUM were seen by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyite organisation and were outlawed. Orwell escaped from Spain by train, Homage to Catalonia is his account of the war. Today there is a square in Barcelona called Placa De George Orwell which is named after him.
From March to September 1938 while back in England Orwell was admitted to a sanatorium in Kent, initially it was thought he was suffering from tuberculosis. In September 1938 he left for Morocco to avoid the English winter. It was during this time that he wrote Coming Up for Air. He returned to England in March of 1939.
World War Two began in September of 1939. Orwell’s wife Eileen began working for the Censorship Department in London. In June of 1940 Orwell was declared unfit for military service, though he did join the Home Guard. Finally in August of 1941 Orwell obtained ‘war work’ he was employed by the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943; he supervised cultural broadcasts to India, he was aware his work was propaganda. He quit the BBC in September of 1943 to concentrate on writing Animal Farm. In November of 1943 Orwell became the literary editor of the Tribune, he stayed there until early 1945. In May of 1944 Orwell and his wife adopted a baby. From February 1945 Orwell was a war correspondent for the Observer, while reporting on continental Europe in March of 1945 Orwell’s wife Eileen died while in hospital undergoing an operation. Animal Farm was finally published in August of 1945.
For the next four years Orwell did journalistic work for the Tribune, Observer and the Manchester Evening News. In May of 1945 Orwell left London for a farmhouse called Barnhill on the Isle of Jura; he saw it as a place to escape from the hassles of London life. This house has since become something of a shrine for Orwell’s fans. It was here Orwell began work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell returned to London at the end of 1946. This was to be one of the coldest winters in Britain on record and this combined with the heavy smog did little to improve Orwell’s health. In April of 1947 he left London again, ending the lease on his flat, on his return to Jura continued to work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. In December 1947 Orwell was pronounced by a doctor to be seriously ill, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and stayed in a hospital outside Glasgow. By the end of 1948 he returned to Jura and finished work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. In January 1949 while in poor health he went to a sanatorium in Gloucestershire.
He moved to University College Hospital in London in September 1949. In October of 1949 he married Sonia Brownell in his hospital room. With the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 Orwell achieved even greater world-wide fame. Orwell’s health had declined by Christmas and on the morning of January 21st 1950 he died at the age of 46. His gravestone is marked ‘’Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born 25 June 1903, died 21 January 1950.’’ There is no mention of his more famous pen-name.
