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George Orwell

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In England, Blair entered the public school system, and was admitted to Eton College in 1917. For most students of this era, Eton led directly to higher education at a university, often Oxford or Cambridge. Blair shunned further formal schooling, and after leaving Eton in 1921, returned to India in 1922 to join the Indian Imperial Police. This work gave Blair his first real experiences with the poor and downtrodden whom he would later champion, and unhappy with the his position as the "hand of the oppressor," Blair resigned from the police force in 1927, returning to England that same year.

Upon return to England, Blair lived in the East End district of London, which was filled with paupers and the destitute, whom he saw as the spiritual kin of the Burmese peasants he had encountered as a policeman. In 1928, Blair moved to Paris to become a writer, where he again lived among the poor, and was eventually forced to abandon his writing temporarily and become a dishwasher. He returned to England the next year (1929), and lived as a tramp before finding work as a teacher at a private school. This position gave Blair time to write, and his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, was published in 1933, under the pseudonym George Orwell. The publication of this first work, which was an account of his years living among the poor of Paris and London, marks the beginning of a more stable period for Orwell, in which he taught, opened a bookshop, and continued to write. His first fictional work, Burmese Days, appeared in 1934.

The next few years saw a steady stream of activity for Orwell, who produced A Clergyman�s Daughter in 1935 and Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936. During this period he also met Eileen Maud O�Shaughnessy, whom he married on June 9, 1936. That same year Orwell received a grant from the Left Book Club to produce a work dealing with the conditions of the poor, which resulted in the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier. In December of 1936, Orwell decided to enlist in the POAM, the Socialist military party in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Attracted by the vision of a society without class distinction, Orwell fought for socialism in Spain, but was wounded in the neck and forced to return to England in 1938. His account of his experiences in Spain was published as Homage to Catalonia that same year. Upon his return to England, however, Orwell fell ill with tuberculosis, which he neglected. In 1941, Orwell went to work for the BBC as a broadcaster for India, a post which he resigned to become the literary editor for The Tribune. This position was equally short-lived, however, as Orwell resigned in 1945 to begin work on Animal Farm. Orwell�s family life experienced significant upheaval during this period, marked by the adoption of a son, Richard, in 1944, and by the death of his wife Eileen during an operation in 1945. Soon after Eileen�s death, Animal Farm was published, and Orwell become "famous overnight". In reaction to the sudden glare of fame, Orwell moved to the island of Jura, off the coast of Scotland, with aggravated his tuberculosis considerably. While at Jura, Orwell wrote his last novel and perhaps most famous novel, 1984, and married Sonia Bromwell. In 1949 Orwell returned to England, but his tuberculosis was by that time painfully advanced. He eventually succumbed to the disease, dying on January 21, 1950.

Essays

1984
1984 is still the great modern classic of "Negative Utopia."

Animal Farm
One of Orwell's best-known works, taking on the guise of an anthropomorphic fable, warns against totalitarianism.

George Orwell: An Age Like This

Road to Wigan Pier

In this brilliant and contemplative biographical essay, Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievement, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. The result is the perfect convergence of two kindred spirits. Hitchens has long regarded Orwell as a mentor and model, and in true emulative and contrarian style, he is both adulatory and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and as problem.

Combining the best of Hitchens's polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, Why Orwell Matters tears down the fa�ade of sainthood erected by hagiographers and probes deeper to find the true George Orwell: gifted, flawed, and human. With lyrical and allusive prose, Hitchens examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture toward which he exhibited little curiosity but much ambivalence.

With his characteristic wit, Christopher Hitchens has written a book that addresses not only why Orwell matters today but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.

Hitchens on Orwell:
This is not a biography, but I sometimes feel as if George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity.

This kind of tribute is often of the Rochefoucauldian type; suggestive of the payoff made by vice to virtue, and also of the tricks played by an uneasy conscience. What [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that "views" do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think, and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.

Others on Hitchens:

"I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delphino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens." -Gore Vidal

"Christopher Hitchens's writing has sweep and flair. He is accurate where others are merely dutiful, unpredictable where the tendency is to go for the clich�. In short, brilliant." -Edward W. Said

"May his targets cower." -Susan Sontag

About the Author
Christopher Hitchens is a popular columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation. His books include Letters to a Young Contrarian, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family, The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice, and For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports. He lives in Washington, D.C.