George Orwell
2008
Author · Social Critic · Journalist
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterized by social criticism, opposition to all forms of totalitarianism (including authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences fighting for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War, are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Her life in Eatonville would change radically when, at 13, her mother passed and her father remarried shortly thereafter. Zora soon left Eatonville and worked, wandered, and struggled to finish school. She earned an associate's degree from Howard University and a bachelor's at Barnard University in New York – the only African American student at the time.
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”
A fan of Jack London, Orwell rooted his work in lived experience. He worked for the Imperial Police in Burma, but eventually resigned to become a writer. He lived in London and Paris, writing articles about the living conditions of the poor and underprivileged, but eventually returned to England and became a teacher, and continued with his writing.
Blair wanted to publish under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family, since he had lived as a ‘tramp’ as described in his book, Down and Out in Paris and London. With the aid of his publisher, they eventually settled on the pen name George Orwell because, “It is a good round English name.” The name George was inspired by the patron saint of England, and Orwell after the River Orwell in Suffolk which was one of Orwell's favorite locations. Down and Out in Paris and London was published by Victor Gollancz in London in January 1933 and received favorable reviews. Cecil Day-Lewis complimented Orwell’s “clarity and good sense”, and The Times Literary Supplement compared Orwell's eccentric characters to the characters of Dickens.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
Orwell traveled to Spain in 1936 to cover the Spanish Civil War. There, he was shot in the throat, and was lucky to survive. During WWII he worked for the BBC, Eastern Service, where he supervised cultural broadcasts to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links. In 1943 he resigned, and was appointed literary editor at Tribune. In 1945, he published Animal Farm: A Fairy Story.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
In 1947 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and was in poor health for the rest of his life. Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on June 8, 1949, to critical acclaim. He died January 21, 1950.
Orwell’s work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective “Orwellian” — describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language. He is responsible for the phrases we all know, such as “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, “Room 101”, “Newspeak”, “memory hole”, “doublethink”, and “thoughtcrime”.