Biography

Biography

Eric Arthur Blair, known under the pseudonym of George Orwell, is one of the most important English-language writers of the 20th century. Orwell was born in British India. He was the son of an official attached to the colony and of a cultured woman interested in art who came from a French family. At just one year old, his mother and two sisters returned to Britain and he did not see his father again until ten years later. Orwell went first to a Catholic school and then to a public institute. He was a good student, fond of writing poetry. Thanks to his excellent grades, he received a scholarship. However, the economic situation of the family worsened, and he was forced to leave his studies to look for work, so he went to Burma to work in the colonial police in 1924. In 1927, he left his job in Great Britain. He made his home in London and traveled to France almost penniless, like a tramp. To learn first-hand how the police treated the poor, he forced them to arrest him. That was the birth his work Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). To avoid embarrassing his family, he used the pseudonym, George Orwell. In those years, he worked in all kinds of trades and fell in love with a friend of one of his sisters, Brenda Salkeld. Although she rejected him, it was the inspiration for her novel A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935). After that, he wrote works such as Keep the Aspidistra Flying and The Road to Wigan Pier, in which he makes a report on the harsh living conditions of coal miners in the north of England. This latest book caused Orwell to be put under police surveillance as a dangerous leftist. In 1936, he married Eileen O´Shaughnessy. Shortly after, he left for Spain where the Civil War had broken out to join the International Brigades in favor of the Republic. He fought on the Aragon front, where he was seriously wounded by a sniper to the throat. In 1937, he returned to England. Most of his friends on the left received his criticism of Stalinism badly. Due to his state of health, he spent a few months in Morocco. Years later, he began working as a correspondent for the BBC radio station until his health problems forced him to leave his post in 1943. That same year, the Rebellion on the estate ended. As they had not been able to have children, he agreed with his wife to adopt a child, whom they named Richard Horatio Blair. He traveled to France as a journalist and while there, Eileen passed away. Desperate and alone, in the company of his son, Orwell settled on a farm on the Scottish island of Jura. He suffered frequent hemorrhages from tuberculosis and at the idea of ​​leaving his son alone, he proposed to several women. It was there, when he wrote his most important book, 1984. One of his acquaintances, Sonia Mary Brownell, accepted Orwell´s proposal and they married when he only had eight months to live. He spent his last days at Cranham Sanitarium, in Gloucestershire.