George Orwell is perhaps not
generally regarded as a man for all seasons, nor was
he everyone's cup of tea, but in a career which
saw virtually two million words in print in just two
decades, his literary legacy is staggering. Dead within
a year of writing 1984, could he have possibly imagined,
I wonder, the extent to which his Big Brother concept
would sweep the world to become one of the largest
dollar generating television concepts – although formulated
in such a way as to be a tragically sad reflection of
the extent of social boredom.
Click on the
Google search engine and you have yourself a choice over 471
000 sites to go literary-Orwell window-shopping. And as for
their contents it is staggering: one, in which I read a collation
of critiques of the various biographies to be had in bookshops
on Orwell, became, the more I read, a Sunday afternoon eavesdropping
feast with everyone in The Park with George! Everyone
who is anyone was having their say, on what others had said
about what they supposedly had said or had not said , or were
or weren't in relation to dear, thoroughly dead George
and naturally, the scandalous and gorgeous Sonia.
The mere, dreary simple fact that life can be like that:
complicated, confusing, contradictory, exploitative, sardonic,
dark, silly, boring and even, oh yes, God forbid… deadly
dull, seems to be the one simple aspect everyone wants to
avoid, especially if that is what defines the nature of the
man, Eric Author Blair.
What I especially appreciate about David Taylor is the very
first point he makes in his book on dear dead George, about
relevance.
How much do we need to know about a writer personally?
The answer is that it doesn't matter. Nothing or
everything is equally satisfactory. Who cares in the end?
A Northrop Frye has said, the only evidence we have of
Shakespeare's existence, apart from the poems and
the plays, is the portrait of a man who was clearly an
idiot. Biography is there for the curious; and curiosity
gives out where boredom begins. – Martin
Amis, The War Against Cliché.
It is this intelligent contextualizing of everything that follows in Orwell:
The Life, which makes the entire exercise of human interest
and intrigue and passionate enquiry into the life and
minds of people we admire, so worthwhile, despite everything……..
And it seems oddly fitting that of all authors to have contributed
something of magnitude to human social consciousness, it
should be none other than Orwell's own Big Brother
that offers a deadly dull voyeuristic reprieve from
the dreariness that is the ordinary life
George Orwell Biography
1903
Eric Arthur Blair born at Motihari, Bengal, India,
(June 25th, son of Richard Walmesley Blair and
Ida Mabel Blair - née Limouzin)
an area in eastern India only about three hundred
miles from Burma. Orwell had an older sister, Marjorie
Frances, born in Gaya (Bengal) in 1898; and a younger
sister Avril Nora born 1908, but he was never very
close to them. Richard Blair was a sub-deputy agent
in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service.
1904
Brought to England by his mother. Family settles
in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
1907
Richard Blair on three months' leave in England.
1908-1911
Attends a day-school at Sunnylands, Henley, an Anglican
school run by nuns, Eastbourne, Sussex. Avril born
6 April 1908.
1911-1916
Boarder at St. Cyprian's preparatory school, Eastbourne,
Sussex.
1912
Richard Blair, retired from India Civil Service,
returns to England. Family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire
(December); near Henley.
1914
First work published: Awake Young Men of England (poem)
2 Oct in Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard.
1915
Blair family moves back to Henley-on-Thames (autumn).
1917
Spends Lent term at Wellington College as a scholar.
1917-1921
King's Scholar, Eton College. Richard Blair commissioned
as 2nd Lieut. posted to 51st (Ranchi) Indian Pioneer
Co., Marseilles. Mrs. Blair let the Henley house
and moved to Earl's Court, London, to work in the
Ministry of Pensions.
1921
The Blairs move to Southwold, Suffolk (December).
1922
Blair attends cramming establishment in Southwold
(January-June), to prepare for India Office examinations.
1922-1927
Assistant Superintendent of Police, Indian Imperial
Police, Burma. Resigns whilst on leave in England,
Autumn 1927 and lives in Portobello Road, Notting
Hill, London Autumn/Winter.
1928-1929
Lives in working class district of Paris, writing
and later working as a dishwasher probably at the
Crillon. Hospitalized with pneumonia at Hopital
Cochin, Paris from 7-22 March 1929.
1930-1931
Goes tramping in London
and Home Counties. Uses Parents home in Southwold
as a base) Writes early version of Down
and Out in Paris and London. Contributes essays to Adelphi (The Spike and A Hanging)
under his own name Autumn of 1931 picks hops in
Kent.
1932-1933
Teaches at the Hawthorns, a small private school
in Hayes, Middlesex. Spring 1932 Leonard Moore becomes
his literary agent.
1933
First book, Down and Out in Paris and London published
by Victor Gollancz. Uses pseudonym "George Orwell" for
the first time. Teaches at Frays College, Uxbridge,
Middlesex. Hospitalized with pneumonia.
1934
Gives up teaching. Spends ten months in Southwold. Burmese Days published in United States (October). Moves to Hampstead, London
(November).
1934-1935
Takes a room at 3 Warwick Mansions, Pond Street, Hampstead, London from Oct
1934 - Jan 1936.Works as part-time assistant with
Jon Kimche, in Booklover's Corner, 1 South
End Road, Hampstead. A Clergyman's Daughter published (March 1935). Burmese Days published
in England (June 1935). Moves to Kentish town,
London in August 1935. Meets Eileen O'Shaughnessy,
age 30 (who earns honours degree in English from
Oxford, runs a typing agency, and then sells it
to study psychology at University College London).
1936
In industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire, investigating working class life
and unemployment at suggestion of Victor Gollancz
(January-March). Moves to Wallington, Herts. (April). Keep
the Aspidistra Flying published (June). Marries Eileen O'Shaughnessy (June 9). Attends
ILP Summer School, Letchworth, Herts. (July). Leaves
for Spain to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish
Civil War, visiting Henry Miller in Paris en route
(December).
1937
In Spain (January-June). Corporal with Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista detachment of the Aragon front. Involved in street
fighting in Barcelona between government and anarchist
troops. Wounded in throat by sniper. Honorable
discharge for medical reasons from P.O.U.M. militia.
Evades arrest during anti-P.O.U.M. purge in Barcelona. The Road to Wigan Pier published
(March). Left Book Club edition of 40,000 copies.
1938
In March he suffers tubercular hemorrhage in his lung and is hospitalized
for six months, in tuberculosis sanitorium, Kent.
Homage to Catalonia published (April). Joins ILP (June). Goes to Morocco
for his health (September).
1939
Returns to England (March). Coming Up for Air published
(June). Death of father.
1940
Inside the Whale published (March). Moves to London (May). Writes
reviews for Time and Tide and Tribune.
Joins Local Defense Volunteers (Home Guards).
1941
The Lion and the Unicorn published (February) Joins the BBC as talks producer
and broadcaster to India in August. His colleagues
include T. S. Eliot and William Empson. At this
time he is also reviewing for Tribune, Time
and Tide, and the Observer, Partisan
Review, and the Manchester Evening News.
1941-1943
Talks Producer, Empire Department, BBC, in charge
of broadcasting to India and Southeast Asia. Death
of mother.
1943-1946
Literary Editor of Tribune.
1944
Orwell and Eileen adopt a one-month old child, whom they name, Richard Horatio Blair. Animal Farm is finished in February, but no publisher will
accept it because of the British Alliance with
Stalin.
1945
War correspondent for The Observer in
Paris and Cologne. Meets Hemingway in Paris (March-May).
Death of Eileen in Newcastle; while under anaesthetic
for operation (March 29).Orwell's wife died as
the result of a minor operation. He attributed
her death to lowered physical resistance due to
the war; both she and Orwell had consistently given
up a part of their wartime food rations to feed
children, and consequently had impaired their health.
Covers first post-war election campaign (June-July). Animal
Farm published (August).
1946
Publishes Critical Essays in
February. Leaves London for the island of Jura in the Inner
Hebrides with his son and a nurse to live in Barnhill,
an abandoned farmhouse. Starts to work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Increasingly ill.
1947
Enters Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, near Glasgow,
with tuberculosis of the left lung (Christmas Eve).
1948
In July, returns to Jura. (Has great difficulty in getting a typists and
so types the book himself) Completes revision of Nineteen
Eighty-Four by December.
1949
Enters sanatorium in Cranham, Gloucestershire in January. Negotiations for
publishing Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The Book-of-the-Month Club in the United States
wants the book without the Newspeak appendix and
Goldstein's essay-but Orwell refuses. Book-of-the-Month
Club relents and accepts the entire book.
June 8, 1949, Secker and Warburg publish Nineteen Eighty-Four. Published by Harcourt Brace in New York on 13 June. Instantaneous
and outstanding success.
Admitted to University College Hospital in September.
13 October, marries Sonia Brownell.
Plans to go to Switzerland on discharge from hospital.
1950
Dies suddenly in University College Hospital, as
he was about to leave for a sanatorium in Switzerland,
of a hemorrhaged lung (January 21). Following his
instructions he is buried, not cremated, according
to the rites of the Church of England at All Saints, Sutton Courtenay,
Berkshire.
It feels also appropriate in this climate of war, outrage,
hostage taking, abuse of political prisoners and terrorism,
political and otherwise to take a look through Orwell's
window on war back in 1945.
