He wrote about these experiences under the name of George Orwell, partly to protect his family from embarrassment and partly because he had never liked his own name very much, in the book called Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). In the next few years he worked briefly as a teacher in private schools and in a bookshop. But his most important activity at this time was his writing: novels, descriptions of his time in Burma and among the poor of London and Paris, and book reviews. It is true that he settled in an unpleasant bedroom in Portobello Road in London where he started to teach himself how to write.

In 1935 he wrote another book A Clergyman’s Daughter, where he hardly criticizes social problems in England during 30s.

In 1937 he went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republic, with the force from the United Marxist Workers Party, until he was badly wounded in the neck and returned to England. About his experiences in the Spanish Civil War he speaks in the book called Homage of Catalonia (1938).

In 1938 Orwell became ill with tuberculosis, and spent the winter in Morocco. While he was staying there he wrote his next book, a novel entitled Coming up for Air, published in 1939. By this time his writing made him well known in left-wing circles; he wrote as a man who believed in socialism but who felt that many people who said they were trying to put it into practice were in fact betraying its principles for their own advantage.

During World War 2 (1939-45) he worked for the BBC, producing programmes for India and South Asia, and as a manager of a bookshop, as well as being very active as a journalist. This was mainly on political subjects, but he also wrote about everyday wartime life in London and a considerable amount of literary criticism. In 1945 he settled on the island of Jura off the Scottish coast and started writing Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). The title of this book was reached by switching the last two digits in the year nineteen forty-eight, the year the book was finished. The islands climate was unsuitable for someone suffering from tuberculosis and Nineteen Eighty-Four reflects the bleakness of human suffering, the indignity of pain. His other part of literary creation was writing essays. We can mention just few of them. For example Inside The Whale And Other Essays (1940), The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Shooting An Elephant And Other Essays (1950) and so on.

George Orwell died on 21st January 1950.














George Orwell and Animal Farm


Animal Farm by George Orwell is a novel based on the lives of a society of animals living on the Manor Farm, which is owned by Mr. Jones.