George Orwell – a novelist, journalist, essayist and critic

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in Motihari, Bengal, India, in June 25, 1903, to a family which he described in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) as ‘lower-upper middle class’: ‘upper-middle class without money’. His father was a minor British official in the Indian civil service; his mother, of French extraction, was the daughter of an unsuccessful teak merchant in Burma

He was educated in England and, after he left Eton, in 1921 he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer.

In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. Orwell took up writing at an early age, reportedly composing his first poem around age four. His first book, the non-fictional Down and Out in Paris and London, appeared in 1933 as the work of George Orwell (the surname he derived from the beautiful River Orwell in East Anglia) and was based on his experiences after he left the police.

In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists.

George Orwell was most famous for his novels 'Animal Farm' (1945) and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1949). Orwell died of tuberculosis in London, England on 21 January 1950.
George Orwell – a novelist, journalist, essayist and critic