Who is George Orwell
George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, story-teller, literary critic, advocate and journalism. He fought for political change and was a man of many contradictions. Orwell’s best work includes the novels Animal farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four. These two novels are literary masterpiece and the sharpest satirical fiction of the twentieth century.
George Orwell’s real name was Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in 1903 in Bengal, India, to Richard Walmesley Blair and Ida Mabel Blair. His father was an English government official.
George was their only son, he had two sisters. He moved to England in his mother and sisters, when he was only one-year-old. At the age of fiv3e, he composed his first poem. Orwell had a gift for wring, which he recognized very early. When he was eleven, his first poem Awake Young men of England was published in the local newspaper.
In 1911, he attended St Cyprian’s, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, on scholarship. He spent the next five years there. He continued his secondary education at Eton, and elite school in 1917. At Eton, he took an interest in politics. he was the King’s Scholar fro 1917 to 1921. George graduated from Eton in 1921.
Orwell’s parents did not have the means to continue his university education. Therefore, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1922. He served as an officer in Burma. After working for five years, he resigned in 1927 because of his growing dislike for the British rule and returned to England. In the novel Burmese Days and the essays Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging, he mentions his life as a police officer and his time in Burma.
In England, he decided to pursue his passion for writing. He struggled financially and also as a writer. He had to do many odd jobs and worked as a teacher at Frays Collage. In 1929, he moved to London. His experiences with poverty and hardships are mentioned in his first novel down and out in Paris and Londo, which was published in 1933. Before his book was published, he closes the pen name “George Orwell”.
In 1934, he published Burmese Days. The book talked about British colonialism in Burma. Orwell got more interested in political matters after the success of his novel. The next year he released A Clergyman’s Daughter his most experimental novel. In 1936, Orwell traveled to Spain. He wrote newspaper columns about the Spanish Civil war. He also joined a revolutionary socialist party called POUM. He was severely injured in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell published Keep the Aspidistra Flying in the same year.
From 1937 to 1939, Orwell published many works like The Road to Wigen Pier, Coming Up for Air and Homage to Catalonia. All these novels were based on his observations of Spain and the civil war.
During World War II, he wanted to join the military, but he was rejected due to health issues. In 1940, Orwell began writing book reviews for the New English Weekly. He also published an essay in three parts called Inside the Whale. In 1941, he joined the BBC as a broadcaster and producer for India.
Orwell released a lot of books including The Lion and the Unicorn during this time. He continued writings reviews for Time and Tide, Tribune the Observer, Partisan Review and Manchester Evening News. In 1943, he resigned from the BBC and officially joined Tribune as a literary editor, writing more than eighty book reviews.
In 1944, Orwell finished his book Animal Farm, the biggest milestone for his literary career. it soon became famous worldwide. After his resignation from the Tribune, he became a war correspondent for The Observer. He contributed too many smaller political and literary magazines while writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was published in 1949. Sadly, Orwell did not live to savor the fruits of his success following Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell married Eileen Shaughnessay in 1936. The couple had a son. Eileen died in 1945. He remained Sonia Bronwell in 1949, three months before his death. Orwell died at age of 46 on January 21, 1950 from the tuberculosis.
Modern readers are often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, mainly through his wildly successful titles Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, the Times listed him in The” 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945’.