George Orwell Biography
Early Years
George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair,
born in 1903 in Motihari, India, during the time of the
British colonial rule. Young Orwell was brought to
England by his mother.
The Orwell family was not wealthy, and, in reading
Orwell's personal essays about his childhood, readers
can easily see that his formative years were less than
satisfying. However, the young Orwell had a gift for
writing, which he recognised at the age of just five or
six. Orwell's first published work, the poem "Awake
Young Men of England," was printed in the Henley
and South Oxfordshire Standard when he was eleven
years old.
Orwell attended Eton College. Because literature was
not an accepted subject for boys at the time, Orwell
studied the master writers and began to develop his
own writing style. At Eton, he came into contact with liberalist and socialist ideals, and it
was here that his initial political views were formed.
Adult Years
Orwell moved to Burma in 1922, where he served as an Assistant Superintendent of
Police for five years before he resigned because of his growing dislike for British
Imperialism. In 1928, Orwell moved to Paris and began a series of low paying jobs. In
1929, he moved to London, again living in what he termed "fairly severe poverty."
In 1933, Orwell gave up teaching and spent almost a year in Southwold writing his
second book, Burmese Days. During this time, he worked part time in a bookshop,
where he met his future wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy. He and Eileen were he married in
1936, shortly before he moved to Spain to write newspaper articles about the Spanish
Civil War.
In Spain, Orwell found what he had been searching for — a true socialist state. He joined
the struggle against the Fascist party but had to flee when the group with which he was
associated was falsely accused of secretly helping the Fascists.
