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Anyone wishing to know George Orwell better need only leaf through the masterpieces of literature he left behind. The plight of poverty exposed in Down and Out in Paris and London was his own; his contempt for communism saw the Russian Revolution<\/a> turned into a barnyard drama in Animal Farm<\/em>; and the haunting pictures of a dystopian future in Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> had been painted as his warning of totalitarianism. Orwell loathed imperialism, rejected a bourgeois lifestyle, and longed \u2013 even fought \u2013 for socialist revolution. And that is all there in painfully personal detail on the pages of his works.<\/p>\n Born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903, he lived first in Bengal, India, where his father worked as a colonial civil servant, then England with his mother and two sisters. His family, as he put it, was \u201cupper-middle class without money\u201d. While clearly intelligent, Blair didn\u2019t enjoy boarding school and, despite winning a scholarship to Eton, neglected his education. Although, one of his teachers may have had an undue influence: Aldous Huxley, author of the seminal dystopian novel, Brave New World<\/em>.<\/p>\n Instead of university, Blair bucked the trend for graduating Etonians and headed, in 1922, to the colony of Burma (now Myanmar) to join the Indian Imperial Police. While he liked the place and people, he grew ashamed of colonial oppression there. The inequality meted out by the British fuelled the flames of his socialist politics and by 1927, had driven him away. He returned to England and ultimately resigned his commission.<\/p>\n Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari, north-east India on 25 June 1903, and grew up in England.\u00a0<\/p>\n After graduating from Eton College, he spent five years in the Imperial Police in Burma (now Myanmar), which left him with a keen sense of political outrage and personal guilt.<\/p>\n Career wise, George Orwell drifted between journalism, tramping and menial jobs, which informed his first book Down and Out in Paris and London<\/em>\u00a0(1933), published under the pseudonym George Orwell. During the 1930s, he published four novels and two more works of nonfiction.\u00a0The Road to Wigan Pier<\/em>\u00a0(1937) examined working-class life in the north of England, while\u00a0Homage to Catalonia<\/em>\u00a0(1938) described his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.<\/p>\n Classified unfit for military service in the Second World War, Orwell worked for the BBC\u2019s Indian Section for two years. Upon leaving the BBC in 1943, he joined the left-wing magazine\u00a0Tribune<\/em>, wrote\u00a0Animal Farm<\/em>\u00a0(1945) and adopted a son, Richard Blair. In 1945, while Orwell was working as a war reporter in Europe, his wife Eileen died suddenly. The following year, Orwell moved to Jura in the Inner Hebrides, and began writing\u00a0Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>. Delayed because of Orwell\u2019s journalism commitments and hospitalisation for tuberculosis, the book was published on 8 June 1949. This dystopian novel is set in a year (which may or may not be 1984) in what was then the future in Airstrip One (Britain), now part of Oceania, one of three warring superstates. The totalitarian ruling Party \u2013 whose leader, Big Brother, is the centre of a powerful personality cult, even though he may not exist \u2013 exerts total control over both actions and thoughts, constantly monitoring Oceania\u2019s people and rewriting history to match present political requirements.<\/p>\n Orwell married Sonia Brownell in October 1949 in hospital in London, where he died on 21 January 1950.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Instead, what Blair really wanted to do was be a writer. He would ultimately go on to pour out his disdain at his experiences in Burma several times, in the novel Burmese Days<\/em> and essays A Hanging<\/em> and Shooting an Elephant<\/em>, but first he turned his attention to the poorest closer to home. To explore this world, and perhaps assuage his own guilt, Blair lived in a rough area of London\u2019s East End<\/a> and the slums of Paris, working menial jobs and journeying with vagrants. The record of these experiences became Down and Out in Paris and London<\/em>, published in 1933.<\/p>\nWhat was George Orwell\u2019s real name?<\/h2>\n
George Orwell: a brief biography<\/h4>\n
When was he born?<\/h6>\n
Education<\/h6>\n
Books<\/h6>\n
Animal Farm and 1984<\/h6>\n
Marriage and death<\/h6>\n