Orwell, George, was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), an English novelist and social critic. Orwell became famous with his novel 1984, published in 1949. The book is a frightening portrait of a totalitarian (government-controlled) society that punishes love, destroys privacy, and distorts truth. The novel includes the well-known statement “Big Brother Is Watching You.” The grim tone of 1984 distinguishes it from Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945), an animal fable satirizing Communism. Orwell’s familiar saying “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” appears in Animal Farm.
Orwell was a unique combination of middle-class intellectual and working-class reformer. A strong autobiographical element runs through most of Orwell’s writing, giving his novels and essays a sense of immediacy and conviction. For example, his experiences living in poverty color Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). The novels attack social injustice and range from the miseries and hypocrisies of the poor of middle-class background to the near-starvation of the slumdweller. Homage to Catalonia (1938) is a nonfiction work based on Orwell’s brief career as a soldier. In it, he describes his military experiences during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
Orwell was born in Bengal, India, on June 25, 1903, the son of an English civil servant. He attended Eton school from 1917 to 1921 and served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (now Myanmar) from 1922 to 1927. He lived in poverty in England and Europe until the mid-1930’s. He died on Jan. 21, 1950.
See also 1984; Animal Farm.
