George Orwell

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Through the mid part of the twentieth century GO was prominent as a reporter on the social and political scene: he was one of those whose reporting helped to shape opinion and whose accounts now seem vital to understanding those times. Several of his essays have canonical status as much on historical as literary grounds. He published novels as well as non-fiction, but his two most famous novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are continuous in aim and effect with his polemical writing. The impact of these two novels was immediately felt and is still being felt in the twenty-first century.

Milestones

25 June 1903

Eric Blair , British novelist and political writer who wrote under the name of GO , was born in Motihari, Bengal, India, the middle one and the only boy in a family of three children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

1933

Eric Blair , using the pseudonym George Orwell, published his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, an account of his first-hand experiences with poverty in those cities.
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams.
37

February 1944

GO completed his well-known satirical fable, Animal Farm, which was rejected for publication by Gollancz , Cape , Collins , and Faber (in the person of T. S. Eliot ).
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams.
41
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

17 August 1945

GO 's dystopian political novel Animal Farm was eventually published by the left-wing firm of Secker and Warburg , after the end of the war in Europe which had caused its earlier rejections.
Borne Back Daily. http://borneback.com/ .
17 August 2009
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

8 June 1949

GO published Nineteen Eighty-Four, his well-known dystopian novel anatomising totalitarianism.
Borne Back Daily. http://borneback.com/ .
8 June 2009
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams.
45

21 January 1950

GO , British novelist and political writer, died in London of a tubercular haemorrhage.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

December 1954

The world premiere of an animated film of GO 's Animal Farm, funded by the CIA and in course of production since 1951, was held at the Paris Theatre in New York.
Hoberman, James. “Short Cuts”. London Review of Books, p. 23.
23

Biography

Birth and Background

25 June 1903

Eric Blair , British novelist and political writer who wrote under the name of GO , was born in Motihari, Bengal, India, the middle one and the only boy in a family of three children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

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