GEORGE ORWELL

George orwell real name was Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950)

George Orwell spent his first days in India, he was the son of a British civil servant. His mother brought him and his older sister, Marjorie, to England when he was 1 yearold. His father stayed in india and didnt visit frequently.(His younger sister, Avril, was born in 1908.Orwell didn't really know his father until he retired from the service in 1912. he never a had a close relationship with him. He found his father to be dull and conservative.

According to one biography, Orwell's first word was "beastly." He was a sick child. He wrote his first poem when he was around 4. He later wrote, "I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued." One of his first literary successes came at the age of 11 when he had a poem published in the local newspaper.

Like many other boys in England, Orwell was sent to boarding school. In 1911 he went to St. Cyprian's in the coastal town of Eastbourne, where he got his first taste of England's class system. On a scholarship, Orwell noticed that the school treated the richer students better than the poorer ones. He wasn't popular with his peers, and in books he found comfort from his situation. He read works by Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells, among others. What he lacked in personality, he made up for in smarts. Orwell won scholarships to Wellington College and Eton College to continue his studies.

After completing his schooling at Eton, his family did not have the money to pay for a university education. Instead he joined the India Imperial Police Force in 1922. After five years in Burma, he returned to England. He was intent on making it as a writer.

He married Eileen O'Shaughnessy in 1936, she always supported Orwell in his career.

Orwell traveled to Spain in 1937,he joined one of the groups fighting against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He was injured getting shot in the throat and arm. He was unable to speak for some weeks. Orwell and his wife, Eileen, were indicted on treason charges in Spain but the charges were brought after they left the country.

He had some other health problems. For years, Orwell had periods of sickness, and he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1938. He spent several months at the Preston Hall Sanatorium trying to recover, but he would continue to battle with tuberculosis for the rest of his life. At the time he was initially diagnosed, there was no effective treatment for the disease.

In 1941, Orwell got a job with the BBC as a producer. He developed news commentary and shows.Orwell enticed such literary greats as T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster to appear on his programs. He resigned in 1943. Around this time, Orwell became the literary editor for a socialist newspaper.

He got famous because of two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, both were published near the end of his life. Animal Farm (1945) was an anti-Soviet story featuring two pigs as its protagonists. These pigs represent Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky. The novel brought Orwell fame and financial rewards.