Biography: George Orwell

George Orwell was the pen name of British author Eric Arthur Blair, born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, India where his father, Richard Walmesley worked as a civil servant for the British Empire. Orwell’s mother, Ida Mabel Blair, moved him and his sister Marjorie to England a year later as that they could be brought up in a more traditional Christian environment. Orwell went to prep schools and went on to Eton College. Orwell went to prep schools and went on to Eton College from 1917 to 1921. He began to write and publish some work in college periodicals. He didn’t care much for school and decided not to pursue further education. Instead, he moved back to India the next year to work for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927. This is where he got his first experiences with the poor and grew to hate his position as the hand of the oppressor for the Imperialist British. He wrote about this aversion in his essays, Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging (Menand). He retires his position and moves back to England where he continued to encounter the destitute in the East End district of London. In 1928, he moved to Paris to become a writer where he again lived among the poor, even taking a job as a dishwasher to make ends meet. He is hospitalized for the first of many times with pneumonia. He returned to England the next year where he lived as a tramp until he landed a job as a teacher at a small private school in Hayes, Middlesex. This position gave him the time to write his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933 and is the first time he uses the pen name George Orwell. This was an account of his days living the poor life in Europe. He becomes sick and is again hospitalized with pneumonia (“George Orwell”).

After a year of teaching he gives it up and works in a bookstore and published his first fictional work, Burmese Days. Over the next few years while investigating the working class life and unemployment a t the suggestion of his publicist, he writes A Clergyman’s Daughter in 1935, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936. During this time he meets Eileen O’Shaugnessy and two years later they were married. Shortly after, he moves to Spain to report on the civil war going on. He adopted the views of a socialist and joined the United Workers Marxist Party militia to help fight for a classless society. After being wounded in the neck by a fascist sniper, he fled Spain in fear of being arrested or worse by the oppositional far left party. He wrote a book on Spain, Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938 (Stricherz).

He returns to England in 1939 when his father passed away. Later that year, Coming Up for Air was published. He moves around Britain the next few years publishing Inside the Whale, The Lion and the Unicorn, and writes reviews for the Time and Tide and Tribune (Bowker 89). From 1941-1946, he is in charge of broadcasting to India and Southeast Asia for the BBC. His mother, Ida, passes away in that last year with the BBC. Orwell and Eileen adopt a one-month old child they name Richard Horatio Blair in 1944. In 1945, he becomes the war correspondent for The Observer in Paris an Cologne (Hitchens 162-164). His wife dies that year while under anesthetic fro an operation. Toward the end of the war, Animal Farm was published. He gained a lot of attention