George Orwell
1984
The New American Library
Copyright 1961
George Orwell
George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. When he was eight years old, as it was customary, his mother brought him back to England to be educated. He was sent to a boarding school on the south coast, a school whose students were sons of the upper class. He was allowed in with lower tuition and not being from a wealthy background, he was subject to snobbery of the others at the school. In 1917 he went to Eton on a scholarship and he enjoyed himself, making friends and reading many books. Orwell graduated in 1921 and instead of going on to a university; he joined the Civil Service and went to Burma as a sergeant in the Indian Imperial Police. He served as a policeman in Burma from 1922 until he took leave in 1927 and resigned his post.
Orwell now had time to think and he decided to live among working-class people in Paris and among the tramps in England for more than a year. During these years he worked as a schoolteacher and got married. Both he and his wife kept a village pub and a village general store. All of these experiences led up to the basis for his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, which was an autobiographical work he published in 1933. This was his first book and he used the name George Orwell. He explained later that he took the last name from an English river near where he lived and the first name as being typically English. The latter part of his work was written primarily about different things and places that he had experienced. For example, he wrote,
Excellent!
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