About George Orwell

George Orwell was the pen name of an Englishman named Eric Blair. He was born in Bengal in 1903, educated at Eton, and after service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, returned to Europe to earn his living writing novels and essays. He was essentially a political writer who wrote of his own times, a man of intense feelings and fierce hates. He hated totalitarianism, and served in the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. He was critical of Communism but was himself a Socialist. He distrusted intellectuals, although he was a literary critic. He hated cant and lying and cruelty in life and in literature. He died at forty-seven of a neglected lung ailment, leaving behind a substantial body of work, a growing reputation for greatness, and the conviction that modern man was inadequate to cope with the demands of his history.