Orwell, George

(1903-1950)

   George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Motihari, Bengal, India, where his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, was a civil servant for the British government. After his education at Eton College, he served for five years in the Burma Imperial Police and resigned because of growing dislike of British imperialism, vocalized in his essays Shooting an Elephant (1950) and A Hanging (1931). In 1926 he returned to Europe and, to learn the facts of poverty first-hand, he worked as a dish washer in Paris and as a tramp in England, out of which he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). By 1933 he was a full-time writer, using his now famous pseudonym, and went on to publish many more novels, essays and poetry. His last two books were Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). He died in London after a long struggle against tuberculosis. Some of his poems: "A Dressed man and a naked man," "As One Non-Combatant to Another," "Ironic Poem About Prostitution," "Oh You Young Men," "On Money," "Poem From Burma," "The Italian Soldier Shook My Hand," "The Lesser Evil."

   Sources: Biography of George Orwell (http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/). Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Everyman's Book of English Verse. John Wain, ed. J.M. Dent, 1981. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Travel Verse. Kevin Crossley-Holland, ed. Oxford University Press, 1986. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Book of War Poetry. Jon Stallworthy, Oxford University Press, 1984. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).