George Orwell
Background
GEORGE ORWELL WAS THE PEN NAME of the English author, Eric Arthur
Blair. Orwell was educated in England at Eton College. After service
with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927, he returned
to Europe to become a writer. He lived for several years in poverty.
His earliest experiences resulted in the book, Down and Out in
Paris and London.
By 1936, Orwell had joined the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil
War. Orwell was critical of Communism but basically considered himself
a Socialist. He was wounded in the fighting. Late in the war, Orwell
fought the Communists and eventually had to flee Spain for his life.
Orwell documented many of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War
in his Homage to Catalonia.
Orwell's various experiences with totalitarian political regimes
had a direct impact on his prose. Orwell's best-known books reflect
his opposition to totalitarianism: Animal Farm and Nineteen
Eighty-Four. In an article entitled, "Why I Write" Orwell would
explain:
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been
written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism...Animal
Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness
of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose
into one whole."
During the Second World War, Orwell wrote a weekly radio political
commentary, designed to counter German and Japanese propaganda in India.
His wartime work for the BBC gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic
hypocrisy. Many believe that this experience provided the inspiration
for his invention of "newspeak," the truth-denying language of Big Brother's
rule in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Throughout his lifetime, the great English author continually questioned
all "official" or "accepted" versions of history. At the conclusion
of the war in Europe, Orwell expressed doubt about the Allied account
of events and posed the following question in his book Notes on Nationalism,
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people
what they do not want to hear... Is it true about the gas ovens in Poland?"
Of all of Orwell's writings,1984 has had the most profound
influence on historical revisionism. Revisionist pioneer, Harry Elmer
Barnes wrote an important essay, "How 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' Trends
Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity," which documented
the prophetic nature of Orwell's classic. Barnes would proclaim,
"Orwell's book is the keenest and most penetrating work produced
in this generation on the current trends in national policy and
world affairs. To discuss world trends today without reference to
the Orwell frame of reference is not unlike writing on biology without
reference to Darwin, Mendel, and De Vries..."
Orwell died in London at the early age of forty-seven of a neglected
lung ailment. He left behind a substantial body of work and a reputation
for greatness.
Biographical Information
Date of Birth- June 25,1903
Place of Birth- Motihari, India
Died - January 21, 1950
Partial Bibliography
- Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
- Burmese Days (1934)
- A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)
- Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
- The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
- Homage to Catalonia (1938)
- Coming up for Air (1939)
- Inside the Whale, and Other Essays (1940)
- Animal Farm (1945)
- Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
- Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (1950)
- Such, Such Were the Joys (1953)
Borrowing from Mr. Orwell's "newspeak," a collection known as the
ThoughtCrimes Archive has been established
to document contemporary incidents of persecution against writers and
historians who refuse to submit to Big Brother's version of history.
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