George Orwell: A Life in Letters
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30 November 1947: ‘Profile: Krishna Menon’ by David Astor, with Orwell, Observer.
20 December–28 July 1948: Patient in Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, Glasgow, with TB.
March 1948: Writes ‘Writers and Leviathan’ for Politics and Letters; when that fails it is published in New Leader, New York, 19 June 1948.
May 1948: Starts second draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Writes ‘Britain’s Left-Wing Press’ for The Progressive.
Writes ‘George Gissing’ for Politics and Letters, published London Magazine, June 1960. About this time makes final amendments to typescript of ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’.
13 May 1948: Coming Up for Air published as first volume of Secker’s Uniform Edition.
28 July 1948–c. 2 January 1949: At Barnhill, Jura.
28 August 1948: ‘The Writer’s Dilemma’ (review of The Writer and Politics by George Woodcock), Observer.
Autumn 1948: Writes ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, published in Partisan Review, June 1949.
October 1948: ‘Britain’s Struggle for Survival: The Labour Government after Three Years’, Commentary.
Early November 1948: Finishes writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and sets about typing manuscript.
15 November 1948: Introduction to British Pamphleteers, vol. 1 (written spring 1947), Allan Wingate.
4 December 1948: Completes typing fair copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four and posts typescript. Has serious relapse.
December 1948: Gives up lease of his flat in Canonbury Square, Islington.
January 1949: Burmese Days published as second volume of Secker’s Uniform Edition.
c. 2 January 1949: Leaves Jura for the last time.
6 January–3 September 1949: TB patient at Cotswold Sanatorium, Cranham, Glos.
Mid-February 1949: Starts but does not complete article on Evelyn Waugh.
March 1949: Corrects proofs of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
9 April 1949: Sends off his last completed review – of Winston Churchill’s Their Finest Hour for New Leader, New York.
April 1949 onwards: Plans novel set in 1945 (not written).
Writes synopsis and four pages of long short-story: ‘A Smoking-Room Story’.
Makes notes for an essay on Conrad.
May 1949: ‘The Question of the [Ezra] Pound Award’, Partisan Review.
8 June 1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four published by Secker & Warburg.
8 June 1949: Given the first Partisan Review Annual Award.
13 June 1949: 1984 published by Harcourt, Brace, New York.
Post June 1949: Signs second ‘Notes for my Literary Executor’.
July 1949: 1984 made American Book of the Month.
August 1949: Plans a volume of reprinted essays.
3 September 1949: Transferred to University College Hospital, London.
13 October 1949: Marries Sonia Brownell in hospital by special licence.
18 January 1950: Signs his Will on eve of his proposed journey to Switzerland which had been recommended for his health’s sake.
21 January 1950: Orwell dies in University College Hospital following a massive haemorrhage of the lungs.
26 January 1950: Orwell’s funeral held at Christ Church, Albany Street, London, NW1. Later that day he is buried at All Saints, Sutton Courtney, Berkshire.
A Short List of Further Reading
All Orwell’s writings – and, with their accompanying notes, they take up some 9,000 pages – are to be found in The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison, assisted by Ian Angus and Sheila Davison, 1998; second paperback edition, 2000–2. The books take up the first nine volumes and are published by Penguin with the same pagination of the texts. The Facsimile of the Manuscript of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ was published in 1984; a supplementary volume, The Lost Orwell, was published in 2006. Penguin Books have also published four collections of essays, edited by Peter Davison, which have notes additional to those in the Complete Works. These are:
Orwell in Spain (includes Homage to Catalonia); 393 pages
Orwell’s England (includes The Road to Wigan Pier); 432 pages with its 32 pages of plates
Orwell and the Dispossessed (includes Down and Out in Paris and London); 424 pages
Orwell and Politics (includes Animal Farm); 537 pages
Reference might also be made to the companion volume to A Life in Letters: Orwell: Diaries, Harvill Secker, 2009 (referred to as Diaries with page number).
Footnote references
References to the Complete Works are given by volume number + item number + page(s), e.g. XX, 3612, pp. 100–2. References to The Lost Orwell are given by LO + page number; a link to the location of the item in Complete Works follows. References to books listed below are given by the author’s name + page number – e.g. Crick, p. 482, except for Orwell Remembered and Remembering Orwell, which are so designated + their page number(s).
There are very many critical studies of George Orwell and his writings. It might be most helpful if only details of recent biographies and half-a-dozen very recent critical studies are listed here. From these it will be fairly straightforward to seek out earlier biographies and studies.
Biographies
Gordon Bowker, George Orwell, Little Brown, 2003 (as Bowker).
Jacintha Buddicom, Eric & Us (1974), with an important Postscript by Dione Venables, Finlay Publishing, Chichester, 2006.
Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick, Orwell Remembered, Ariel (BBC), 1984 (as Orwell Remembered).
Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, Secker and Warburg, 1980; Penguin, 1992 edition with important new Appendix (as Crick).
Scott Lucas, Orwell, Haus Publishing, 2003.
Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation, Norton, 2000.
Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorised Biography, Harper Collins, New York, 1991; William Heinemann, 1991, London (which is quoted as Shelden).
Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell, Hamish Hamilton, 2002.
D. J. Taylor, Orwell: The Life, Chatto & Windus, 2003 (as Taylor).
John Thompson, Orwell’s London (with many photographs by Philippa Scoones), Fourth Estate, 1984 (as Thompson).
Stephen Wadhams, Remembering Orwell, Penguin Canada, 1984 (as Remembering Orwell).
Critical Studies
Thomas Cushman and John Rodden, George Orwell: Into the Twenty-first Century, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 2004.
Christopher Hitchens, Orwell’s Victory, Allen Lane, 2002 (as Why Orwell Matters in USA).
Douglas Kerr, George Orwell, Northcote House: Writers and their Work, 2003.
Emma Larkin, Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, John Murray, 2004.
Daniel J. Leab, Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of ‘Animal Farm’, Pennsylvania State UP, 2007.
The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, edited by John Rodden, CUP, 2007.
John Rodden, Every Intellectual’s Big Brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings, University of Texas, Austin, 2006. This gives a valuable account of the Centenary Conference, ‘George Orwell: An Exploration of His World and Legacy’, held at Wellesley College, near Boston, Massachusetts in May 2003. In many ways it takes further John Rodden’s, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1989.
Loraine Saunders, The Unsung Artistry of George Orwell: The Novels from ‘Burmese Days’ to ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington V T, 2008.
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961), third Penguin edn. 1977 (as Thomas).
Internet Websites
www.finlay-publisher.com – this is the website of Eric & Us. This publishes essays by leading scholars every two months together with comments from readers. It is run by Dione Venables who wrote the Postscript to the second edition to Jacintha Buddicom’s book of that title (2006).
www.orwelldiaries.wordpress
.com – which not only gives details of events related to the annual Orwell Prize, but also details of many other events. It reproduces some of the articles from the Eric & Us website and is currently reproducing Orwell’s diary entries day by day seventy years on. Associated with that is an excellent Google map showing where Orwell was when he wrote his diary entries. It is run by Professor Jean Seaton and Gavin Freeguard.
Biographical Notes
An asterisk after a name in the text indicates an entry here.
Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004), novelist, essayist and critic. He was born in India, fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (although he did not meet Orwell in Spain). He wrote scripts and broadcast for the BBC from 1939–45 and did much work for Orwell whilst he was there. After the war he lectured in various Indian universities and became Professor of Fine Arts, University of Punjab in 1963. He and Orwell were frequent companions, especially at the BBC. He told W.J. West that Orwell had a predilection for quoting often and at length from the Book of Common Prayer, which he clearly knew well.
Jordi Arquer i Saltó (1906–81), a Catalan, was one of Orwell’s comrades in the POUM. He was a defendant in the ‘POUM trial’, October–November 1938, a trial in which Orwell and his wife, Eileen, might also have appeared had they not left Spain (see XI, 374A). Arquer was charged with espionage and desertion but the charges collapsed because of the transparent absurdity of the evidence. He was instead charged with organising a meeting in Lérida in preparation for the May Events in Barcelona. He insisted on speaking only in Catalan at the trial and was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment; on his release he went to live in Paris.
The Hon. David Astor (1912–2001) served in the Royal Marines, 1940–45, and was successively foreign editor (1946–48), editor (1948–75), and a director (1976–81) of the Observer, doing much to improve its content and increase its circulation. He and Orwell were very good friends. Astor was instrumental in finding him somewhere to live on Jura, obtained streptomycin for him in his final illness, and arranged for him to be buried as Orwell wished. Despite Orwell’s reputation for being gloomy, Astor told the editor that when he felt depressed, he would seek out Orwell because Orwell’s humour so cheered him up.
Avril Blair (1908–1978), Orwell’s younger sister. She came to live with her brother at Barnhill and worked very hard caring for him, the house, and their smallholding. She married Bill Dunn in 1951 and cared for Orwell’s son, Richard, after her brother died. Richard Blair has contributed a valuable essay on Avril to the Eric & Us website (www.finlay-publisher.com) where the essay has been archived.
Eileen Blair née O’Shaughnessy (1905–45) married Orwell on 9 June 1936. She was born in South Shields and graduated from Oxford in 1927. When she met Orwell she was reading for a master’s degree in psychology at University College London. During the war she first worked (ironically) in a Whitehall Censorship Department, and then at the Ministry of Food. Lettice Cooper worked with her at the Ministry of Food. Eileen, she recalls, was ‘of medium height, a little high-shouldered, she was very pretty, and had what George called a cat’s face, blue eyes and near black hair. She moved slowly, she always looked as if she was drifting into a room with no particular purpose there. She had small, very shapely hands and feet. I never saw her in a hurry, but her work was always finished up to time. . . . Eileen’s mind was a mill that ground all the time slowly but independently. Diffident and unassuming in manner she had a quiet integrity that I never saw shaken’ (X, p. 394).
Ida Blair née Limouzin (1875–1943),Orwell’s mother. She was born at Penge in Surrey to an English mother and a French father but brought up and lived in India. She was a lively and independent woman and, as her diary shows, led an active social and sporting life on her return to England in 1904. Her family had connections with Burma. She was adept at arranging for her son and Avril to be cared for by others in school holidays.
Richard Horatio Blair (1944– ), adopted by Eric and Eileen Blair in June 1944. His middle name is a Blair family name. As was common in the early twentieth century, children were, so far as possible, kept away from those with tuberculosis. Thus Richard and his father saw far less of each other than either wished, especially when Orwell was in Hairmyres Hospital and Cranham Sanatorium. After his father’s death he was cared for by Orwell’s sister, Avril, and her husband, Bill Dunn. He was educated at Loreto and Wiltshire Farm School, Lackham, and finally at the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, Aberdeen. He married Eleanor Moir in 1964 and farmed in Herefordshire before joining Massey-Fergusson in 1975. See his memoir, ‘Life with my Aunt Avril Blair’, www.finlay-publisher.com.
Richard Walmsley Blair (1857–1939), Orwell’s father. He joined the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service in 1875 and rose to the rank of sub-deputy agent, retiring in 1912. For reasons unknown he took sick leave for fifteen months from 20 August 1885. In 1917 he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 51st (Ranchi) Indian Pioneer Company, Marseilles, serving as one of the oldest, and for a time the oldest, lieutenants in the army until 9 December 1919. The Blairs retired to Southwold, Suffolk, in December 1921. Although Jacintha Buddicom describes the Blairs as a united and happy family, she also tellingly describes Mr Blair as ‘not unkind’.
Zulfaqar Ali Bokhari, Indian Programme Organiser for the BBC from the foundation of its Indian Section and Orwell’s superior officer. After the war he became director-general of Pakistan Radio.
Henry Noel Brailsford (1873–1958), socialist intellectual, author, political journalist and leader writer for several newspapers including the Manchester Guardian. He edited the ILP’s weekly journal, The New Leader, 1922–26
Laurence Brander (1903– ) was BBC Eastern Intelligence Officer when Orwell worked for that section. His report on the BBC’s Indian service graphically describes the difficulties faced by the service and also its shortcomings. See XV, 2374, pp. 343–56. In this he states that ‘our most damaging failure’ has been English programmes for Indians. His George Orwell was published in 1954 and in it he wrote that Orwell ‘was the inspiration of that rudimentary Third Programme which was sent out to the Indian student’. He wrote many studies of literary figures including Tobias Smollett, William Thackeray, Aldous Huxley and E.M. Forster.
Ivor Brown (1891–1974), author, critic, editor, drama critic and leader writer for the Manchester Guardian, 1919–35. He was also drama critic for the Observer and its editor from 1942–48, (XVII p. 313). If Orwell wrote a review that troubled him he did not hesitate to write for external advice, e.g. as to whether his correspondent thought ‘the whole tone of [the review] breathes a distaste for christianity’ (The Lost Orwell, p. 104).
Sonia Brownell (1918–80), Orwell’s second wife. A short memoir by Ian Angus (who knew her well and worked with her in the production of the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters (1968) which did so much to establish Orwell’s wider reputation) will be found in XX, pp. 170–1. Despite her widely acknowledged generosity, she has been subjected to much unfair adverse criticism. Only with Hilary Spurling’s The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (2002) did a balanced account become available. Curiously, she was born at Ranchi, Bihar, only some 230 miles from Orwell’s birthplace at Motihari. She was the innocent victim in a boating accident on a Swiss lake in 1936. She and three other teenagers were caught in a vicious squall; she was the only one who could swim and the others drowned. Sonia never wholly recovered from this tragedy. She worked on Horizon where Cyril Connolly introduced her to Orwell. She and Orwell married in University College Hospital, on 13 October 1949. When Arthur Koestler heard of their wedding, he told Orwell how happy he and his wife, Mamaine, were, and that the first of his three wishes for Sonia had been ‘that she should be married to you’ (XX, p. 329). It was Sonia who established the Orwell Archive which has done so much to preserve Orwelliana.
Jacintha Buddicom (1901–93) was the eldest child of Laura and Robert Buddicom. Her father had been curator of Plymouth M
useum but moved to Shiplake-on-Thames to take up market gardening. Her brother, Prosper (1904–68) and sister, Guinever (1907–2002) were Orwell’s childhood companions when he was at home. She and Orwell exchanged poems and her vivid memoir, Eric & Us (1974), describes how they played together. See the second edition with its very informative postscript by Dione Venables (2006), and Jacintha’s letter of 4 May 1972 on page 8 of this book.
Dennis Collings (1905–2001) was a friend of Orwell’s from the time the Blair family moved to Southwold in 1921. Collings’s father became the Blairs’ family doctor. He read anthropology at Cambridge and was appointed assistant curator of the Raffles Museum, Singapore in 1934. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese but survived the war. Also in 1934 he married Eleanor Jaques, a close friend of Orwell’s.
Alex Comfort (1920–2000), poet, novelist, medical biologist. He wrote a number of books including No Such Liberty (1941), a miracle play (Into Egypt, 1942) and, most famously, The Joy of Sex (1972). He also co-edited Poetry Folios, nos 1–10, 1942–46.
Jack Common (1903–68), a working man from Tyneside who worked for The Adelphi from 1930 to 1936, first as a circulation pusher, then as assistant editor, and from 1935–36 as co-editor with Sir Richard Rees. He wrote several books and Crick called him ‘one of the few authentic English proletarian writers. In 1938 Orwell reviewed his The Freedom of the Streets (XI, pp. 162–3). He and his wife, Mary, lived in the Orwells’ cottage at Wallington whilst the latter were in Morocco.
Cyril Connolly (1903–74) was with Orwell at St Cyprian’s and Eton. They met again in 1935 after Connolly had reviewed Burmese Days. They were associated in a number of literary activities, particularly the journal Horizon which Connolly edited with great distinction. See his Enemies of Promise (1938), which has references to Orwell; and The Rock Pool (1936), which Orwell reviewed (X, pp. 490–1) and which includes the critique, ‘A more serious objection is that even to want to write about so-called artists who spend on sodomy what they have gained by sponging betrays a kind of spiritual inadequacy’, a world that it is clear the author ‘rather admires’.