About the Author: George Orwell

Birth name: Eric Arthur Blair

Date of Birth: June 25, 1903 (in Motihari, Bengal, the son of a minor british official in India)

Education: Went to private school. Was a very good student. Instead of continuing his education and going to a university, he became an officer in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.

Died: January 21, 1950 (due to a lung hemorrhage)

George Orwell had always wanted to write "a neat shelf of realistic novels." When he returned to England after his service in Burma in 1927, he wrote about the depressing British service there in "Burmese Days" (1934). He lived in London and then in Paris and wrote "Down and Out in Paris and London" (1933), which is specifically about Orwell's poverty during his time in those cities. In the 1930's his work became more political than literary.

In the late 1930's Orwell went to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War where he joined the military as a captain. During his time in the war he was shot in the neck and unfortunately was left with permanent vocal chord damage. "Homage to Catalonia" was published in 1938 and it was based on his experiences in Spain.

Orwell married Eileen O' Shaughnessy one year before he moved back to England after the Spanish Civil war. After the start of World War II, Orwell became a member of the home guard and started work in the Indian division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) where he worked on political and literary commentaries on the war. In 1943 he left the BBC and became a member of the Tribune, writing a weekly column called "As I Please". In 1945 Orwell's wife, Eileen died, which left Orwell to raise a son they adopted in 1944.

At this point in time Orwell was chronically ill (especially with pneumonia). He spent the end of his life on an island of Jura in the Outer Hebrides. Here he worked on his last novel, 1984. He was admitted to a London hospital in 1949 for tuberculosis treatment. While there he married a younger editorial assistant, Sonia Brownwell. He past 3 months later due to hemorrhaging in his lung.

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