Nineteen Eighty-Four

About George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), much better known by the pen name George Orwell was a British author, journalist and socialist. George Orwell was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. Educated in England at Eton, he moved to Burma in 1922 where he joined the Indian Imperial Police for five years.

After a period doing a variety of jobs in France he returned to England where he opened a village shop. As a Marxist, Orwell was in danger of being murdered by communists in the Republican Army. With the help of the British Consul in Barcelona, Orwell was able to escape to France. Orwell published Coming up for Air in 1939.Noted as a political and cultural commentator, as well as an accomplished novelist, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century.

He is best known for two novels written towards the end of his short life: Animal Farm, a satire in fable form of the communist revolution in Russia, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, a pessimistic satire about the threat of political tyranny in the future. The novel had a tremendous impact and many of the new words and phrases used in the book passed into everyday language.

George Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950.