George Orwell

-
Standard Name: Orwell, George
Used Form: Eric Blair
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Publishing Elizabeth Taylor
After this story (a near-declaration of love between a married woman and an old friend, which comes to nothing)
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
124
she soon succeeded in placing two more, one of them with Orwell 's Tribune (which...
Friends, Associates Stevie Smith
Her large circle of friends also included Sally Chilver (author of A History of Socialism), novelists Inez Holden , Olivia Manning , and Cecily Mackworth , Kay Dick (assistant editor of John O'London's Weekly...
Textual Features Stevie Smith
The title is a parody of a line from Orwell 's Animal Farm.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber.
227
Literary responses Edith Sitwell
To George Orwell , a socially-committed writer of a later generation, this book showed a completely frivolous emphasis on technique, treating literature as a sort of embroidery, almost as though words did not have meanings...
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Rumens
Several poems delight in the history of spots around nineteenth-century London; others are sonnets; others combine satire with their piercing social observation, such as the dystopian, Orwell -inspired 2084.
politics Eleanor Rathbone
In Homage to Catalonia (1952), George Orwell accused the duchess in particular of a naïveté born of elite status. Orwell claimed that she did not really believe in the existence of anything outside of the...
Friends, Associates Ruth Pitter
Despite her singularly unleisured lifestyle, RP had a remarkable talent for friendship, which extended to people with whom she might be expected to have little in common. Her friendship with Lord David Cecil brought her...
Occupation Una Marson
UM was featured alongside Mulk Raj Anand , William Empson , and T. S. Eliot on the BBC 's radio magazine programme Voice edited by Eric Blair (George Orwell) .
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press.
157-8
Friends, Associates Una Marson
While working for Selassie , UM met the writer and racial activist Nancy Cunard , who was in Geneva as a reporter for the American Associated Negro Press . Later her BBC work enabled her...
Health Una Marson
In April 1946, UM 's English friend Stella Mead noticed that Marson was not doing well psychologically, and arranged for the writer Clare McFarlane to take her back to Jamaica with him. Suffering from depression...
Intertextuality and Influence Hilary Mantel
Vacant Possession takes up the story ten years later, in the significantly Orwellian year of 1984, and is described by its author as a state-of-the-nation novel.
Edemariam, Aida. “Interview with Hilary Mantel”. The Guardian, pp. 28-9.
28
Evelyn has died by misadventure, and Muriel is...
Textual Features Rose Macaulay
The book concerns the illicit love of Kitty Grammont for her boss at the Ministry of Brains, Nicholas Chester, who is not allowed to marry under the eugenics laws in force in this society of...
Intertextuality and Influence Deborah Levy
This book has four sections, each titled from a reason for writing, Political Purpose, Historical Impulse, Sheer Egoism, and Aesthetic Enthusiasm. The first and last describe a period of near-breakdown that...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Q. D. Leavis
Here and elsewhere she published on a wide range of authors and literary topics, including Trollope , Hardy , Gissing , Forster , Orwell , and Aldous Huxley ; the Anglo-Irish, American, French, Italian, and...
Textual Features Marghanita Laski
Through Rachel's conversations with the soldiers, it emerges that the Americans and Russians are vying for control over the offshore island, and the captain suspects that Russians have reached the family before him. ML uses...

Timeline

February 1936: The awesome trio of political theorist Harold...

Writing climate item

February 1936

The awesome trio
Laity, Paul. “The left’s ace of clubs”. Guardian Unlimited.
of political theorist Harold Laski , publisher Victor Gollancz , and writer and Labour MP John Strachey established the Left Book Club (LBC) .

18 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans...

National or international item

18 July 1936

The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco .

March 1940: An essay by George Orwell, published in Horizon,...

Writing climate item

March 1940

An essay by George Orwell , published in Horizon, claimed that popular boys' magazines of this time [stopped] the clock . . . at 1910. Britannia rules the waves, and no one has heard...

1 October 1954: In the Movement, a leading article in the...

Writing climate item

1 October 1954

In the Movement, a leading article in the Spectator, identified a newly sceptical and debunking tendency in modern British poetry, opposed to social hierarchy and cultural authority, including that of modernism.

22 January 1984: A commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and...

Building item

22 January 1984

A commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and aired during the broadcasting of the Super Bowl (US football championships), announced Apple Computers ' release of the Macintosh computer.

Texts

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Secker and Warburg, 1945.
Orwell, George. Burmese Days. Harper and Brothers, 1934.
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London. V. Gollancz ltd , 1933.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Secker and Warburg, 1938.
Orwell, George. Keep the Aspidistra Flying. V. Gollancz Ltd. , 1936.
Orwell, George. My Country Right or Left 1940-1943. Editors Orwell, Sonia and Ian Angus, Penguin Books, 1970.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker and Warburg, 1949.
Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant: and Other Essays. Secker & Warburg, 1950.
Orwell, George. The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Penguin in association with Secker and Warburg, 1984.
Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. Gollancz, 1937.