Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), better known by the name of the avatar George Orwell , is a British novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by clear prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and loud support of democratic socialism.
Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is best known for the allegorical novel Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), document his experiences of working-class life in northern England, and Veneration to Catalonia (1938), a report on his experience in the Spanish Civil War, is widely recognized, as is his essay on politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked second in the list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's work continues to influence popular culture and politics, and the Orwellian term - the description of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices - has entered the common language with many of its neologisms, including Big Brother, Police Mind , Room 101 , memory hole , newspeak , doublethink , proles , unperson , and thoughtcrime .
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Life
Initial years
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bihar, in British India. His great-grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy country man in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, the daughter of the Earl of Westmorland, and had an income as a landlord who was absent on a plantation in Jamaica. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a priest. Though the nobility decreases the generation, prosperity is not; Eric Blair describes his family as a "lower middle class".
His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked at the Indian Civil Service Opium Department. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (nÃÆ' Â © e Limouzin), grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in a speculative venture. Eric has two sisters: Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral home in Motihari have been declared a protected monument for historical purposes.
In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Eric grew up in the company of his mother and sister, and apart from a short visit in mid-1907, they did not see Richard Blair's husband and father until 1912. His mother's diary from 1905 depicts a round of lively social activity and artistic interest.
Before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter, Jacintha. When they first met, he stood over his head in a field. When asked why, he said, "You pay more attention if you stand on your head than if you are right." Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming a famous writer. He said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wells A Modern Utopia . During this period, he also enjoyed shooting, fishing, and bird watching with Jacintha's brothers and sisters.
At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to the convent school in Henley-on-Thames, which was also attended by Marjorie. It was a Roman Catholic monastery run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, and he needed a scholarship. Ida Blair's brother, Charles Limouzin, recommends St. Cyprian, Eastbourne, East Sussex School. Limouzin, an adept golfer, knew about his school and principal through Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The principal did to help Blair win scholarships, and made personal financial arrangements that allowed Blair's parents to pay only half of the normal cost. In September 1911 Eric arrived at St. Cyprian's. She goes to school for the next five years, returning home just for school holidays. He knows nothing about the reduced costs, though he "immediately recognizes that he is from a poorer home". Blair hated school and years later wrote an essay "Such, Such Are the Joys", published posthumously, based on the time there. At St. Cyprian's, Blair first met Cyril Connolly, who became a writer. Years later, as editor of Horizon, Connolly publishes several Orwell essays.
While at St. Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. He came second to Connolly at the Harrow History Prize, having his work complimented by an external examiner of the school, and getting a scholarship to Wellington and Eton. But the inclusion in Eton's scholarship list does not guarantee a place, and nothing is available for Blair. He chose to stay at St Cyprian until December 1916, if a place in Eton became available.
In January, Blair takes place in Wellington, where she spends the spring. In May 1917 the place became available as King's Scholar in Eton. He remained at Eton until December 1921, when he left midway between his 18th and 19th birthday. Wellington was "cruel", Orwell told his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton. His primary counselor is A. S. F. Gow, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who also advised him later on in his career. Blair was taught French by Aldous Huxley. Steven Runciman, who was at Eton with Blair, notes that he and his colleagues appreciate Huxley's linguistic talents. Cyril Connolly follows Blair to Eton, but since they are in a separate year, they are not related to each other.
Blair's academic performance report shows that he neglected his academic studies, but during his time at Eton he worked with Roger Mynors to produce College magazine, The Election Times, joined in the production of other publications - College Days and Bubble and Squeak - and participate in Eton Wall Game. His parents could not afford to send him to university without other scholarships, and they concluded from his bad results that he would not be able to win it. Runciman notes that he has a romantic idea about the East, and the family decides that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the predecessor of the Indian Police Service. For this he must pass the entrance exam. His father had retired to Southwold, Suffolk, at this time; Blair is enrolled in a crammer there called Craighurst, and polishes his Classics, English, and History. He passed the entrance exam, coming seventh of the 26 candidates who exceeded the pass mark.
Policing in Burma
Blair's maternal grandmother lives in Moulmein, so she chooses a post in Burma. In October 1922 he sailed on the SS Herefordshire vessel via the Suez and Ceylon Canal to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. A month later, he arrived in Rangoon and went to a police training school in Mandalay. He was appointed Assistant District Inspector on November 29, 1922. After a brief post at Maymyo, Burma's main hill station, he was stationed at Myaungmya's outpost in the Irrawaddy Delta in early 1924.
Working as an imperial police officer gave him a great responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at universities in England. When he was placed further east in Delta to Twante as a sub-division officer, he was responsible for the security of about 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was sent to Syriam, closer to Rangoon. Syriam owns an oil refinery from the Burmah Oil Company, "the surrounding land becomes a waste of waste, all vegetation is killed by the smoke of sulfur dioxide that flows out day and night from the pile of refineries." But the city is near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan port, and Blair goes to the city as often as possible, "to look at a bookstore, eat well-cooked food, to get away from the boring police routine." In September 1925 he went to Insein, home of Insein Prison, the second largest prison in Burma. At Insein, he "talks at length about every possible thing" with Elisa Maria Langford-Rae (who later marries Kazi Lhendup Dorjee). He noted "a sense of fairness in the smallest details".
In Burma, Blair gained a reputation as an outsider. He spends most of his time alone, reading or pursuing pukka activities, such as attending Karen ethnic churches. A colleague, Roger Beadon, recalled (in a 1969 tape to the BBC) that Blair quickly learned the language and that before he left Burma, "can speak fluently with Burmese priests in 'very high Burmese.'" Blair made the changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life. "While in Burma, he gained a mustache similar to that used by the British regiment officers stationed there. [He] also obtained several tattoos, in each knuckle he had a neat little blue circle, many Burmese living in rural areas are still sporting tattoos. " like this - they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites. "Later, he wrote that he felt guilty about his role in the imperial work and he" began to look more closely at his own country and see that Britain also has the oppressed... "
In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where the maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned to Katha in Upper Burma, where he was infected with dengue in 1927. Entitled to leave in England that year, he was allowed back in July because of his illness. While on vacation in England and on holiday with his family in Cornwall in September 1927, he reassessed his life. Deciding to return to Burma, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer, with effects from March 12, 1928 after five and a half years of service. He drew on his experience in Burmese police for Burmese Days (1934) novels and "A Hanging" (1931) and "Shooting an Elephant" (1936) essays.
London and Paris
In England, he settled in a family home in Southwold, renewed acquaintance with local friends and attended the Etonian Lama dinner. He visited his old teacher Gow at Cambridge to seek advice on being a writer. In 1927 he moved to London. Ruth Pitter, a family acquaintance, helped her find a place to live, and by the end of 1927 she had moved into a room on Portobello Road; a blue plaque commemorating his residence there. Pitter's involvement in the movement "will give him a convincing respect in Mrs Blair's eyes." Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writings, pointed out the weaknesses in his poems, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write "certain aspects of the present that he began to know" and "ventured into the East End of London" - the first of calls he sometimes did to find himself a world of poverty and down-and-people who lives there. He has found the subject. This attack, exploration, expedition, tour or immersion is intermittently performed for five years. "
In imitating Jack London, whose writings he admired (especially The People of the Abyss), Blair began to explore the poor parts of London. On his first visit, he left for Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night at a public residence, possibly a 'kip' belonging to George Levy. For a while he "became native" in his own country, dressed as a homeless, adopted the name P.S. Burton and not making concessions to the middle class and customs; he recorded his low life experiences for use in "The Spike", his first essay published in English, and in the second half of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).
In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lives on rue du Pot de Fer, a working-class district in the 5th arrondissement. Her aunt, Nellie Limouzin also lives in Paris and gives her financial support and, if necessary, finances. He began writing novels, including early versions of Burmese Days, but nothing survived that period. He was more successful as a journalist and published an article in Monde, a political/literary journal edited by Henri Barbusse (his first article as a professional writer, "La Censure en Angleterre", appeared in a journal on October 6, 1928); G. K.'s Weekly , in which the first article appeared in the UK, "A Farthing Newspaper", printed on December 29, 1928; and Le ProgrÃÆ'¨s Civique (founded by left wing coalition Le Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in consecutive weeks at Le ProgrÃÆ'¨s Civique : discussing unemployment, a day in homeless life, and beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty is to be his obsessive subject - at the heart of almost everything he writes until Veneration to Catalonia ."
He fell severely ill in February 1929 and was taken to Cochin Hospital in the 14th arrondissement, a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experience there was the foundation of his essay "How the Poor Die", published in 1946. He chose not to identify the hospital, and was deliberately misleading about its location. Shortly after, he had all his money stolen from his inn. Either out of necessity or for gathering material, he did such gruff work as washing dishes at a fashionable hotel on rue de Rivoli, which he later described in Down and Out in Paris and London. In August 1929, he sent a copy of "The Spike" to the magazine John Middleton Murry New Adelphi in London. The magazine was edited by Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees, and Plowman accepted the work for publication.
Southwold
In December 1929, after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went straight to her parents' house in Southwold, a coastal town in Suffolk, which remained her base for the next five years. The family is well established in the city, and his sister, Avril, runs a tea house there. He became acquainted with many local people, including Brenda Salkeld, the priest's daughter who worked as an exercise teacher at St Felix Girls School in town. Although Salkeld declined his offer to marry, he remained a regular friend and correspondent for many years. He also renews friendships with older friends, such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques also plays a role in his life.
In the early 1930s he stayed briefly at Bramley, Leeds, with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin, who did not appreciate Blair when they knew each other as children. Blair wrote a review for Adelphi and acted as a private tutor for a disabled child at Southwold. He later became a teacher for three younger brothers, one of whom, Richard Peters, who later became a leading academic. "His history in these years is characterized by duality and contrast, there is Blair who leads a life without problems in his parent's world in Southwold, writes, then on the contrary, there is Blair as Burton (the name he uses under it-and-out episodes) to looking for experience in corners and nails, in the East End, on the road, and in the Kent hop field. "He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz, who later influenced his career. Over the next year he visited them in London, often meeting up with their friend Max Plowman. He also often lives in the home of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees, where he can "change" for his sporadic exploratory expeditions. One of his jobs is housework at an inn for half the crown (two shillings and six pence, or one eighth of a pound) per day.
Blair now contributes regularly to Adelphi , with "A Hanging" which appeared in August 1931. From August to September 1931, his explorations of poverty continued, and, like the protagonist of the Reverend Princess, â € <â € , he follows the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop field. He keeps a diary of his experience there. After that, he lodged in Tooley Street tap, but did not last long, and with financial help from his parents moved to Windsor Street, where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appears in the October 1931 edition of New Statesman , whose editorial staff includes his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz made him in touch with Leonard Moore, who became his literary agent.
At this point Jonathan Cape rejected A Scullion's Diary , the first version of Down and Out . On the advice of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber and Faber, but their editorial director, T. S. Eliot, also rejected it. Blair ends the year by deliberately getting himself arrested, so he can experience Christmas in jail, but the authorities do not consider the behavior of "drunk and disorganized" as imprisoned, and he returns home to Southwold after two days in a police cell.
Career teaching
In April 1932, Blair became a teacher at Hawthorns High School, a school for boys in Hayes, West London. This is a small school that offers private schools for the children of local merchants and shopkeepers, and has only 14 or 16 boys aged between ten and sixteen, and one other teacher. While at school he became friendly with the pastor of the local parish church and was involved with the activities there. Mabel Fierz has been in trouble with Moore, and by the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was ready to issue A Scullion's Diary for £ 40, through his newly-founded publishing house Victor Gollancz Ltd , which is an outlet for radical and socialist works.
At the end of summer in 1932, Blair returned to Southwold, where her parents used the inheritance to buy their own home. Blair and her sister Avril spent the holidays making the house livable while she also worked on the Burmese Days. He also spent time with Eleanor Jacques, but his attachment to Dennis Collings remained a hindrance to his hopes for a more serious relationship.
"Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to be sent to prison, appeared in August's Adelphi . He again taught at Hayes and prepared to publish his book, now known as Down and Out in Paris and London. He wants to publish under a different name to avoid embarrassment to his family during his time as a "vagrant". In a letter to Moore (dated November 15, 1932), he abandoned the choice of a pseudonym for Moore and Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting a pseudonym of P.S. Burton (the name he used when exploring), Kenneth Miles , George Orwell and H. Lewis Allways . He finally adopted George Orwell's "nom de plume" because "This is a good English name." Down and Out in Paris and London was published on January 9, 1933, as Orwell continues to work on the Burmese Days. Down and Out very successful and subsequently published by Harper & amp; Brothers in New York.
In mid-1933 Blair left Hawthorns to become a teacher at Frays College, in Uxbridge, Middlesex. It is a bigger place with 200 students and complete staff. He bought a motorcycle and traveled through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he became soaked and cold that developed into pneumonia. She was taken to Uxbridge Cottage Hospital, where for a while her life is believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934, he returned to Southwold to recover and, supported by his parents, never returned to teach.
He was disappointed when Gollancz refused the Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential defamation suits, but Harper was ready to publish in the United States. Meanwhile, Blair began working on the novel Princess of a Pastor, utilizing her life as a teacher and living in Southwold. Eleanor Jacques is now married and went to Singapore and Brenda Salkield has gone to Ireland, so Blair is relatively isolated in Southwold - working in the plots, walking alone and spending time with her father. Finally in October, after sending The Princess of a Pastor to Moore, he left for London to retrieve the work that was found for him by his aunt Nellie Limouzin. Hampstead
This job is as a part-time assistant at Booklovers' Corner, a former bookstore in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who is a friend of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes family is friendly and gives him comfortable accommodation in Warwick Mansions, Pond Street. He shares a job with Jon Kimche, who also lives with Westropes. Blair works in the shop in the afternoon and in the morning is free to write and is free to socialize at night. This experience provides background for the Keep the Aspidistra Flying novel (1936). As well as various guests from Westropes, he can enjoy the company of Richard Rees and writer Adelphi and Mabel Fierz. Westropes and Kimche are members of the Independent Labor Party, although currently Blair is not politically active. He writes for Adelphi and prepares Princess of the Pastor Burma Days for publication.
In early 1935 he had to move from Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him as a flat on Parliament Hill. The Princess of a Priest was published on March 11, 1935. In early 1935, Blair met his future wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, when the owner, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology at University College London. , invited some friends to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, a biographer and Chekhov's future translator, tells of Blair and his friend Richard Rees, "wrapped" in a fireplace, looking, he thought, "eaten by moths and aged." Around this time, Blair has started writing reviews for New English Weekly .
In June, the Burmese Days was published and Cyril Connolly's review on New Statesman encouraged Blair (when he came to be known) to rebuild contact with his old friend. In August, he moved to a flat in Kentish Town, which he shared with Michael Sayers and Rayner Heppenstall. The relationship was sometimes awkward and Blair and Heppenstall even came to blows, though they remained friends and then worked together on BBC broadcasts. Blair now works on Keep Aspidistra Flying , and also tries unsuccessfully to write a series for News Chronicle . In October 1935 his classmates moved and he struggled to pay his own rent. He stayed until the end of January 1936, when he stopped working at the Booklovers Corner.
The Road to Wigan Wharf
At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating the social conditions in northern England who are economically depressed. Two years earlier J. B. Priestley had written about England in the north of Trent, which sparked interest in reportage. The depression has also introduced a number of British working-class writers from Northern England to public reading.
On January 31, 1936, Orwell left by public transport and on foot, reaching Manchester via Coventry, Stafford, the Potteries and Macclesfield. Arriving in Manchester after the banks closed, he had to stay at a typical inn. The next day he picked up a list of contacts sent by Richard Rees. One of them, trade union official Frank Meade, suggested Wigan, where Orwell spent February living in a dirty inn above a tripe shop. At Wigan, he visited many homes to see how people lived, recorded in detail about housing conditions and earned wages, went to the Bryn Hall coal mine, and used the local public library to consult public health records and reports on working conditions at the mine.
During this time, he is distracted by worries about style and likelihood of slander at Keep Aspidistra Flying . He made short visits to Liverpool and during March, lived in south Yorkshire, spending time in Sheffield and Barnsley. As well as visiting mines, including Grimethorpe, and observing social conditions, he attended Communist Party meetings and Oswald Mosley - "his usual clapping speech - The charge for everything is placed on a mysterious Jewish international gang" - where he sees Blackshirts tactics - "one can get punches and fines to ask Mosley a tough question. " He also made a visit to his sister at Headingley, where he visited Bronta  «Parsonage in Haworth, where he was" particularly impressed by a pair of Charlotte Bronta-studded boots, very small, with square toes and binding on the side. "
The result of his journey through the north is The Road to Wigan Pier , published by Gollancz for Left Book Club in 1937. The first half of this book documents his social inquiry about Lancashire and Yorkshire, including an evocative picture of work life at the mine coal. The second half is a long essay on his education and the development of his political conscience, which includes arguments for Socialism (though he endeavors to balance the concerns and purposes of Socialism with the obstacles he faces from proponents of the movement itself in time, like the 'primat' and 'boring', and 'proletarian' socialists with little understanding of the true ideology). Gollancz fears the second half will offend readers and add a preface to the book while Orwell is in Spain.
Orwell needed a place where he could concentrate on writing his book, and once again the help was given by Aunt Nellie, who lived in Wallington, Hertfordshire in a small 16th century cottage called "Shop". Wallington is a small village 35 miles north of London, and the lodge has almost no modern facilities. Orwell took over the lease and moved on April 2, 1936. He started working at The Road to Wigan Pier at the end of April, but also spent hours working on the garden and testing the possibility of reopening the Shop as a village shop. Keep the Aspidistra Flying was published by Gollancz on April 20, 1936. On 4 August Orwell gave a lecture at Adelphi Summer School held at Langham, entitled An Outsider Seeing the Distressed Terrain ; others who spoke at school included John Strachey, Max Plowman, Karl Polanyi and Reinhold Niebuhr.
Orwell's research for The Road to Wigan Pier caused him to be placed under scrutiny by the Special Branch of 1936, for 12 years, up to a year before the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four .
Orwell married Eileen O'Shaughnessy on June 9, 1936. Shortly thereafter, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there. At the end of the year, feared by the military uprising of Francisco Franco, (backed by Nazi Germany, Italian Fascists and local groups like Falange), Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. Under the mistaken impression that he needed letters from several left-wing organizations to cross the border, on the recommendation of John Strachey, he failed to apply them to Harry Pollitt, leader of the British Communist Party. Pollitt was suspicious of Orwell's political reliability; he asked if he would join the International Brigade and advised him to get safe action from the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Not wanting to do it himself until he sees the situation there, Orwell instead uses his Independent Labor Party contacts to get a cover letter to John McNair in Barcelona.
Spanish Civil War
Orwell left for Spain on December 23, 1936, dining with Henry Miller in Paris on the way. The American writer told Orwell that going to war in the Civil War because some sense of duty or guilt was 'stupidity', and that the British idea of ​​fighting Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., is all nonsense. A few days later, in Barcelona, ​​Orwell met John McNair from the Office of the Independent Workers' Party (ILP) who quoted him: "I came to fight against Fascism" . Orwell stepped into the complicated political situation in Catalonia. The Republican Government is supported by a number of factions with conflicting objectives, including the Marxist-Marxist Labor Party, the Anarcho-syndicalist Confederation Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the united Socialist Party of Catalonia (Spanish Communist Party wing, supported) by weapons and Soviet assistance). ILP is associated with POUM so Orwell joins the POUM.
After some time in the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quiet Front Aragon under Georges Kopp. In January 1937 he was in Alcubierre 1,500 feet (460 m) above sea level, in the depths of winter. There was little military action, and Orwell was struck by the lack of ammunition, food and firewood, and other extreme shortcomings. Orwell, with the training of Cadet Corps and his police force, quickly became a corporal. At the arrival of British ILP Contingent about three weeks later, Orwell and other British militia, Williams, were sent with them to Monte Oscuro. The newly arrived ILP contingents include Bob Smillie, Bob Edwards, Stafford Cottman and Jack Branthwaite. The unit was then sent to Huesca.
Meanwhile, in England, Eileen tackles issues related to the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier before leaving for Spain alone, leaving Nellie Limouzin to guard The Stores. Eileen volunteered to post at John McNair's office and with the help of Georges Kopp paid a visit to her husband, bringing him English tea, chocolate, and cigars. Orwell had to spend a few days in the hospital with his poisoned hand and most of his belongings were stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in the night raid on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed the enemy rifle position.
In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. Wanting to be sent to the Madrid front, which meant he "had to join the International Column", he approached a Communist friend who was tied to Spanish Medical Assistance and explained his case. "Though he's not thinking much about Communism, Orwell is still ready to treat them as friends and allies, that will change soon." This is the time of Barcelona May Days and Orwell stuck in a factional battle. He spends a lot of time on the roof, with a stack of novels, but meets Jon Kimche from the days of Hampstead during his stay. The next campaign of lies and distortions by the Communist press, where POUM is accused of collaborating with fascists, has a dramatic effect on Orwell. Instead of joining the International Brigade as he intended, he decided to return to Front Aragon. After May's battle was over, he was approached by a Communist friend who asked if he still wanted to move to the International Brigade. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, because according to the Communist press he was a fascist. "No one in Barcelona at that time, or months later, will forget the terrible atmosphere generated by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crowded jails, huge food queues, and a gang of gunmen wandering around. "
Upon returning to the front, he was injured in the throat by a sniper bullet. At 6Ã, ft 2 in (1.88 m) Orwell is much taller than the Spanish fighters and has been warned against standing against the moat trench. Unable to speak, and with blood flowing from his mouth, Orwell was carried on a stretcher to SiÃÆ'Â © tamo, loaded in an ambulance and after a bumpy ride through Barbastro arrived at the hospital in LÃÆ' Â © rida. He recovered enough to wake up and on 27 May 1937 sent to Tarragona and two days later to the POUM sanatorium on the outskirts of Barcelona. The bullet had missed the main artery with the weakest margin and barely audible. It was a clean shot so the wound went straight through the cautery process. She received electrotherapy treatment and was declared medically unhealthy for the service.
In mid-June, the political situation in Barcelona has deteriorated and POUM - painted by pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organization - is banned and attacked. The Communist line is that POUM is "objectively" Fascist, obstructing the Republican aim. "A very bad poster appeared, showing the head with a mask of POUM being snatched to reveal the face of a covered Swastika beneath it." Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to hide, even though they were trying to protect Kopp.
Finally with their passports in order, they escape from Spain by train, diverting to Banyuls-sur-Mer for a short visit before returning to England. In the first week of July 1937, Orwell arrived back at Wallington; on July 13, 1937, a deposition was granted to the Tribunal for Espionage & amp; High Treasury, Valencia, fills Orwell with "fanatical trotism", and becomes a POUM agent. The trials of POUM and Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona in October and November 1938. Observing the events of French Morocco, Orwell wrote that they were "- merely a by-product of the Russian Trotsky trial and from the beginning of every kind of lie, including absurdity which is striking, has been circulated in communist media. "Orwell's experience in the Spanish Civil War gave rise to Veneration to Catalonia (1938). Rest and recovery
Orwell returned to England in June 1937, and stayed at O'Shaughnessy's home in Greenwich. He found his view of the Spanish Civil War unpopular. Kingsley Martin rejects his two works and Gollancz is equally careful. At the same time, the Communist Workers are attacking at The Road to Wigan Pier, taking the context from Orwell writing that "the working class smells"; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening defamation stops this. Orwell can also find more sympathetic publishers for his views on Frederic Warburg of Secker & amp; Warburg. Orwell returns to Wallington, which he finds in chaos after his absence. He obtained a goat, a rooster he called "Henry Ford", and a poodle he called "Marx" and settled on the ranch and wrote a Reverence to Catalonia.
There was a thought to go to India to work in Pioneer, the newspaper in Lucknow, but in March 1938, Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was received at Preston Hall Sanatorium in Aylesford, Kent, a British Legion hospital for former soldiers whose brother-in-law Laurence O'Shaughnessy is attached. She was initially thought to be suffering from tuberculosis and lived in a sanatorium until September. Stream of visitors came to see him, including Common, Heppenstall, Plowman, and Cyril Connolly. Connolly brings with Stephen Spender, the cause of shame as Orwell refers to Spender as a "sissy friend" some time before. Veneration to Catalonia is published by Secker & amp; Warburg and commercial failure. At the end of his stay at the clinic, Orwell can take a walk in the countryside and study nature.
Novelis L. H. Myers secretly funded a trip to Morocco France for half a year to Orwell to avoid the British winter and restore his health. Orwell departed in September 1938 through Gibraltar and Tangier to escape the Spanish Morocco and arrive in Marrakech. They rented a villa on the road to Casablanca and during that time Orwell wrote Coming Up for Air . They arrived back in England on March 30, 1939 and Coming Up for Air was published in June. Orwell spent time in Wallington and Southwold working on the Dickens essay and in July 1939 Orwell's father, Richard Blair, died.
Second World War and Animal Farm
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell Eileen's wife began working at the Central London Department of Censorship, staying for a week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also put his name into the Central Register for war work, but nothing happened. "They will not have me in the army, at any rate at this time, because of my lungs," Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays, Inside the Whale . For the following year he was busy writing reviews for dramas, movies and books for The Listener, Time and Tide and New Adelphi. On March 29, 1940, his long relationship with the Tribune began with a review of a sergeant's report on Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. In early 1940, Connolly's first edition of Horizon appeared, and this provided a new channel for Orwell's work as well as new literary contacts. In May Orwells rented flats in London in Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street, Marylebone. It was a time of Dunkirk's evacuation and death in France's brother Eileen, Lawrence, causing his long-term sadness and depression. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary.
Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board in June, but soon afterwards found an opportunity to engage in war activities by joining the Front Guard. He shared Tom Wintringham's socialist vision for Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia. Her lecture notes to instruct platoon members include advice on street fighting, field forts, and the use of mortars of various kinds. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit Fredric Warburg to his unit. During the Battle of Britain, he used to spend the weekend with Warburg and his new Zionist friend, Tosco Fyvel, at Warburg's home in Twyford, Berkshire. At Wallington he worked in "England Your England" and in London wrote reviews for various magazines. Visiting Eileen's family in Greenwich brought him face to face with the explosive effect in East London. In the mid-1940s Warburg, Fyvel and Orwell planned Searchlight Books. Eleven volumes finally emerged, in which Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and English Genius, published on 19 February 1941, was the first.
Beginning in 1941 he began writing for the American Partisan Review linking Orwell with The New York Intellectuals, as he was anti-Stalinist, but committed to remaining on the Left, contributing to the Gollancz anthology of Left Betrayal , written in the light of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (although Orwell calls it the Russo-German Pact and Hitler-Stalin Pact). He also applied unsuccessfully to a job in the Ministry of Water. Meanwhile, he still writes reviews about books and dramas and currently meets novelist Anthony Powell. He also took part in several radio broadcasts for the BBC's East Service. In March Orwell moved into a seventh-floor flat in Langford Court, St. John's Wood, while Wallwell Orwell "dug in" by planting potatoes.
One can not have a better example of our moral and emotional tenure of our time, than the fact that we are now more or less pro Stalin. The disgusting killer is while on our side, so cleaning, etc., is suddenly forgotten.
In August 1941, Orwell eventually acquired "war work" when he was taken on a full-time basis by BBC Eastern Service. He oversaw cultural broadcasts to India to counter the propaganda of Nazi Germany designed to undermine Imperial relations. This was Orwell's first experience of rigid life conformity in the office, and it gave him the opportunity to create a cultural program with contributions from T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, E. M. Forster, Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, and William Empson among others.
At the end of August he had dinner with H. G. Wells turning into a row because Wells had been offended by Orwell's observations about him in the Horizon article. In October Orwell suffered bronchitis attacks and his illness recurred repeatedly. David Astor was looking for a provocative contributor to The Observer and invited Orwell to write for him - the first article to appear in March 1942. In early 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work in the Ministry of Food and in mid -1942 Orwell moved to larger flats, ground floor and basement, 10a Mortimer Crescent at Maida Vale/Kilburn - "the kind of lower-middle-class atmosphere that Orwell thinks is London's best." At about the same time, Orwell's mother and sister Avril, who had found work in the sheet metal factory behind King's Cross Station, moved into a flat near George and Eileen.
At the BBC, Orwell introduces Voice , a literary program for his Indian broadcast, and now leads an active social life with literary friends, especially on the left side of politics. At the end of 1942, he began writing regularly for the left-wing weekly
In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC post he had occupied for two years. His resignation follows a report confirming his fear that only a few Indians are listening to the broadcast, but he also wants to concentrate on writing
In November 1943, Orwell was appointed a literary editor at the Tribune, where his assistant was his old friend Jon Kimche. Orwell was staffed until early 1945, wrote over 80 book reviews and on 3 December 1943 started his usual personal column, "As I Please", usually handling three or four subjects in each. He still writes reviews for other magazines, including the Partisan Review , Horizon and New York
In May Orwells had a chance to adopt a child, thanks to Eileen's sister Gwen O'Shaughnessy's contact, then a doctor in Newcastle over Tyne. In June, a V-1 flying bomb attacked Mortimer Crescent and Orwells had to find another place to live. Orwell had to scavenge in the wreckage for his collection of books, which he finally managed to remove from Wallington, then took him away with a wheelbarrow.
Another bomb is Cape's reversal of his plan to publish Animal Farm . The decision follows his personal visit to Peter Smollett, an official at the Ministry of Information. Smollet was later identified as a Soviet agent.
Orwell spent some time in the Northeast, near Carlton, County Durham, dealing with matters in the adoption of a boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair. In September 1944 they had set up a home in Islington, at 27b Canonbury Square. Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up her job at the Food Ministry to look after her family. Secker & amp; Warburg had agreed to publish Animal Farm , which was planned for next March, though it did not appear in print until August 1945. In February 1945, David Astor had invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for > Observer . Orwell had searched for opportunities throughout the war, but his medical reports that failed to prevent him were allowed to approach action. He went to Paris after the liberation of France and to Cologne after being occupied by the Allies.
That's when he was there so Eileen went to the hospital for a hysterectomy and died under the influence of drugs on March 29, 1945. He did not give Orwell much notice about this operation for fear of the cost and because he hoped to make a quick recovery. Orwell returned home for a while and then returned to Europe. He eventually returned to London to cover the 1945 elections in early July. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story was published in England on August 17, 1945, and a year later in the US, on August 26, 1946.
Jura and Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Animal Farm has a certain resonance in the postwar climate, and its worldwide success has made Orwell the wanted figure.
For the next four years Orwell's journalism work was mixed - especially for the Tribune The Observer
In the year following Eileen's death, he published about 130 articles and an option of his work, while remaining active in various political lobbying campaigns. He hired a housekeeper, Susan Watson, to look after his adopted son in the Islington flat, now described by visitors as "gloomy". In September, he spent two weeks on the island of Jura in the Hebrides of the Inside and saw it as a place to escape from the complexities of London's literary life. David Astor was instrumental in arranging a place for Orwell in the Jura. The Astor family owns a Scottish plantation in the area and an Etonian colleague Old Robin Fletcher owns the property on the island. In late 1945 and early 1946 Orwell made some desperate and undesirable marriage proposals for younger women, including Celia Kirwan (later to be Arthur Koestler's sister-in-law), Ann Popham who happened to live in the same flat block and Sonia. Brownell, one of Connolly's places in the Horizon office. Orwell suffered tuberculous bleeding in February 1946 but disguised his illness. In 1945 or early 1946, while still living at Canonbury Square, Orwell wrote an article about "English Cookery", complete with recipes, commissioned by the British Council. Given the postwar shortcomings, the two sides agreed not to publish it. Her sister Marjorie died of kidney disease in May and shortly afterwards, on May 22, 1946, Orwell set out to stay on the Isle of Jura.
Barnhill is an abandoned farmhouse with another building near the northern tip of the island, located at the end of an eight kilometer (8 km), swift path from Ardlussa, where the owners live. The conditions in the farmhouse were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving the place appealed to Orwell. Her sister, Avril, accompanied her there and young novelist Paul Potts made the party. In July Susan Watson arrives with Orwell's son, Richard. Tension grew and Potts left after one of his manuscripts was used to light a fire. Orwell was preparing to work on Nineteen Eighty-Four . Then girlfriend Susan Watson, David Holbrook arrived. As a fan of Orwell since school, he found a very different reality, with Orwell being hostile and unpleasant perhaps because of Holbrook's membership in the Communist Party. Susan Watson could no longer stand with Avril and she and her boyfriend left.
Orwell returned to London in late 1946 and took back his literary journalism. Now a famous writer, he is flooded with work. In addition to his visit to Jura in the new year, he lives in London for one of England's coldest winters on record and with a national fuel shortage so he burns his child's furniture and toys. Heavy fumes in the days before the Clean Air Act of 1956 did not help much for his reluctant health, and remained unaware of medical attention. In the meantime, he must overcome the claims of competitor Gollancz and Warburg publishers for publishing rights. Around this time he was editing a collection titled British Sweeper with Reginald Reynolds. As a result of Animal Farm's success, Orwell expects a large bill from the Inland Revenue and he contacts the firm of accountants where his senior partner is Jack Harrison. The company advised Orwell to set up a company to own the copyright and to receive royalties and make "service agreements" so that he could withdraw the salary. Such companies "George Orwell Productions Ltd" (GOP Ltd) was established on September 12, 1947 even though the service agreement was not enforced. Jack Harrison leaves the details at this stage to the junior colleague.
Orwell left London for Jura on April 10, 1947. In July he ended the rent at Wallington's cottage. Back at Jura he works on Nineteen Eighty-Four and makes good progress. During that time, his sister's family visited, and Orwell led a disaster-boating expedition, on August 19, which almost caused the loss of life while trying to cross the famous Corryvreckan ravine and give him immersion that was not good for his health. In December a chest specialist was summoned from Glasgow who expressed Orwell's severe pain and the week before Christmas 1947 he was at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, then a small village in the countryside, on the outskirts of Glasgow. Tuberculosis was diagnosed and permission request to import streptomycin to treat Orwell went as far as Aneurin Bevan, then Minister of Health. David Astor helped with supply and payment and Orwell began his journey from streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948. By the end of July 1948 Orwell could return to Jura and in December he had completed the Nineteen Eighty-Four manuscript In the month In January 1949, in a very weak condition, he left for a sanatorium in Cranham, Gloucestershire, escorted by Richard Rees.
The Sanatorium at Cranham consists of a series of small wooden chalets or huts in a remote part of the Cotswolds near Stroud. Visitors were surprised by Orwell's appearance and concerned with the brevity and ineffectiveness of the treatment. Friends worry about his finances, but now he is relatively capable. He wrote to many of his friends, including Jacintha Buddicom, who had "rediscovered" him, and in March 1949, visited by Celia Kirwan. Kirwan had just started working for the Foreign Office unit, the Information Research Department, set up by the Labor government to publish anti-communist propaganda, and Orwell gave him a list of people he deemed unsuitable as an IRD writer for the pro communist tendencies. The list of Orwells, not published until 2003, consists primarily of writers but also includes Labor actors and Labor MPs. Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and slightly improved. In June 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four was published for critical and popular acclaim.
Last month and death
Orwell's health continued to decline since the diagnosis of tuberculosis in December 1947. In mid-1949, he approached Sonia Brownell, and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was transferred to University College Hospital in London. Sonia took over Orwell's affairs and followed her diligently in the hospital, causing concern to some old friends like Muggeridge. In September 1949, Orwell invited his accountant Harrison to visit him in the hospital, and Harrison claimed that Orwell later asked him to become director of GOP Ltd and to manage the company, but there were no independent witnesses. Orwell's marriage took place in the hospital room on October 13, 1949, with David Astor being the best man. Orwell suffered a setback and was visited by a variety of visitors including Muggeridge, Connolly, Lucian Freud, Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Potts, Anthony Powell, and Eton lecturer Anthony Gow. Plans to go to the Swiss Alps are moot. Further meetings were held with his accountant, where Harrison and Mr and Mrs Blair were confirmed as company directors, and where Harrison claimed that "service agreements" were implemented, granting copyright to the company. Orwell's health declined again before Christmas. On the night of January 20, 1950, Potts visited Orwell and slipped away to find him asleep. Jack Harrison visited later and claimed that Orwell gave him 25% of the company. Early on January 21st, an artery exploded in Orwell's lung, killing him at the age of 46.
Orwell had requested to be buried according to the Anglican rite at the nearby church cemetery wherever he died. The graveyard in central London had no space, and feared that he might have to be cremated for his wishes, his widow pleaded with his friends to see if any of them knew the church with the space in his grave.
David Astor lives in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, and arranges for Orwell to be buried at the All Saints' Churchyard there. Orwell's tomb contains a simple tombstone: "Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born June 25, 1903, died January 21, 1950"; unnamed on the headstone of the more famous pen name.
Orwell's son, Richard Horatio Blair, was raised by Orwell's sister Avril. He maintains a public profile as a protector of the Orwell Society. He gives interviews about some of the memories he has about his father.
In 1979, Sonia Brownell brought the High Court action against Harrison when he declared his intention to divide 25 percent of his company's shares among his three children. For Sonia, the consequence of this maneuver is to make the overall control of the company three times more difficult. He was considered to have a strong case, but became increasingly ill and was eventually persuaded to get out of court on November 2, 1980. He died on December 11, 1980, 62 years old.
Maps George Orwell
Careers and literary heritage
For much of his career, Orwell has been famous for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his reportage books: Down and Out in Paris and London (describing the period of poverty in cities this), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and the division of classes generally) and Veneration to Catalonia . According to Irving Howe, Orwell was "the best English essay since Hazlitt, probably since Dr. Johnson."
Modern readers are more frequently introduced to Orwell as a novelist, especially through the highly successful titles of Animal Farm and
Come for the Air , his final novel before World War II was the most "British" of his novels; war alarms mingle with typical childhood Edwardian childhood pictures of the protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and capitalism have killed the best in Old England, and there are tremendous new external threats. In simple terms, Bowling argues the totalitarian hypothesis of Borkenau, Orwell, Silone and Koestler: "Old Hitler is different, so Joe Stalin They are not like people in the past who crucified people and cut off their heads and so forth, just to have fun - happy that... They are something very new - something that has never been heard before ".
Literary influence
In an autobiographical work that Orwell sent to editors of the 20th century writers in 1940, he wrote: "The authors I care about most and never bored are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens , Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers James Joyce, TS Eliot and DH Lawrence. But I believe the most influential modern writer I have is W. Somerset Maugham, whom I greatly admire for its power of telling a straightforward, -embel. "Elsewhere, Orwell greatly applauds Jack London's works, especially his book The Road to Origan's investigation of poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier is very similar to Jack London's < > The People of the Abyss , in which American journalists disguise themselves as unmarried sailors to investigate the lives of the poor in London.In his essay "Politics vs. Literature: Gulliver's Travel Inspection" (1946) Orwell writes: "If I have to make a list of six books that must be maintained when everyone is destroyed, I will definitely put Gulliver's Journey between them. "
Orwell was an admirer of Arthur Koestler and became a close friend for three years that Koestler and his wife, Mamain, spent time at the Bwlch Ocyn lodge, a remote farmhouse of Clough Williams-Ellis, in the Vale of Ffestiniog. Orwell reviews Koestler. Darkness at Noon for New Statesman in 1941, says:
Brilliant because this book is a novel, and a brilliant work of literature, this may be very valuable as interpretation of "confession" of Moscow by someone who has a deep knowledge of totalitarian methods. What is frightening of these trials is not the fact that they are happening - because obviously such things are necessary in totalitarian societies - but the Western intellectual will to justify them.
Other authors admired by Orwell include: Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Gissing, Graham Greene, Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Tobias Smollett, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, and Yevgeny Zamyatin. He is an admirer and critic of Rudyard Kipling, praising Kipling as a gifted writer and a "good bad poet" whose work is "fake" and "morally and aesthetically insensitive", but undeniably seductive and able to speak to certain aspects. reality is more effective than a more enlightened author. He has an ambivalent attitude similar to GK Chesterton, whom he considers to be a considerable talent writer who has chosen to devote himself to "Roman Catholic propaganda", and to Evelyn Waugh, who, he writes, "ab [ou] t as either a novelist as can be (ie as a novelist goes today) while holding an unsustainable opinion ". Orwell as a literary critic
Orwell as literary critic
Throughout his life Orwell has constantly supported himself as a book reviewer, writing so long and sophisticated that they have an influence on literary criticism. He wrote in conclusion to his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens,
When someone reads every strong writing, one has the impression of seeing a face in a te
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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