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Orwell<-novels<-chapter 8<-contents<-position

10. George Orwell (1903-1950)
Life

   George Orwell was the pseudonym of the English writer Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in Bengal, India. His father was an official of the British government in the Indian Civil Service and his mother was a daughter of a French timber merchant. Orwell was sent back to England to receive education, when he was eight. Although he was very poor, he was a brilliant student at school. Then he was educated at Eton College under Aldous Huxley. After graduation he joined the India Civil Police from in Burma, where the natives’ hatred to Britain gave him a deep impression. His experience in Burma was later reflected in his first novel Burmese Days (1934). He resigned the post and returned to Europe in 1928 and lived a poor life when he was in Paris and London. The experience of living as a homeless tramp provided him with materials in writing his first book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). From 1935 he became a free-lance writer. In 1936 he went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Returning to England, he lived his life as a reviewer for the “New English Weekly” until 1940. During the Second World War he was a member of the Home Guard and worked for BBC Eastern Service until 1943. From 1945 he was the regular contributor to “Observer” and later “Manchester Evening News”. He died of tuberculosis in 1950.
     He wrote six novels and other books. As a socialist, he was intensely sensitive to political issues. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) was his first political book. As a novelist, he always adopted points of view to present the complexities of human characters and relationships. His important novels were Homage to Catalonia (1938), which recorded the failure and disillusionment during fighting in Spain. In the 1930s he also published other three novels A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspodistra Flying (1936) and Coming Up for Air (1939). Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) were his later well-known novels.

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