George Orwell

Name at birth: Eric Arthur Blair

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, who was born in India and educated in England. As a young man he spent 7 years in Burma working for the Indian Imperial Police. He returned to Europe, and in 1933 published his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, a first-hand account of his self-imposed poverty. He wrote dozens of political essays, but is most famous for his satire of Stalinist totalitarianism, Animal Farm (with its famous quote: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others"), and for his description of modern dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four ("Big Brother is watching you.").

The term "Orwellian" joins the Fosbury Flop in our loop titled Who's What?

Other authors of Orwell's era: Graham Greene, T.S. Eliot, W. Somerset Maugham and Paul Bowles.

Blog posts mentioning George Orwell:
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