Homestead mailing list

["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

From: Tvoivozhd<mailto:tvoivozd AT infionline.net> 

http://www.readprint.com/<http://www.readprint.com/>

by title or by author, and there is a list of authors :

....George Orwell's 1984 *and* Animal Farm are *there* !
....as is a photo of him and the following :
To read literature by George Orwell, 

select from the list on the left. 

George Orwell (1903-1950) was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari, 
Bengal, India. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair was a civil servant for 
the British government. In 1904 Orwell moved with his mother and sister to 
England where he remained until 1922. He began to write at an early age, and 
was even published in college periodicals, but he did not enjoy school. 
Orwell wrote about his unfavorable prep-school experiences in the essay Such 
were the Joys (1968). 

Orwell failed to win a university scholarship and without the opportunity to 
continue his education he went to Burma and served in the administration of 
the Indian Imperial Police from 1922 to 1927 when he resigned in part due to 
his growing dislike of British imperialism, a dislike he vocalized in his 
essays Shooting an Elephant (1950), and A Hanging (1931). 

When Orwell returned to Europe he was in poor financial condition and worked 
low paying jobs in France and England. Finally, in 1928, he decided to become 
a professional writer. Starting in 1930 Orwell became a regular contributor 
to the New Adelphi, and in 1933 he assumed the name "George Orwell" by which 
he would become famous. For his first novel he used his recent experience 
with poverty as inspiration and wrote Down and Out in Paris and London 
(1933). While teaching in a private school he published his second major 
work, Burmese Days (1934). Two years later Orwell married Eileen 
O'Shaugnessy. 

During the 1930s Orwell had adopted the views of a socialist and traveled to 
Spain to report on their civil war. He took the side of the United Workers 
Marxist Party militia and fought alongside them, which earned him a wound in 
the neck. It was this war that made him hate communism in favor of the 
English brand of socialism. Orwell wrote a book on Spain, Homage to 
Catalonia, which was published in 1938. 

During the second World War Orwell served as a sergeant in the Home Guard and 
also worked as a journalist for the BBC, Observer and Tribune, where he was 
literary editor from 1943 to 1945. It was toward the end of the war that he 
wrote Animal Farm, and when it was over he moved to Scotland. 

It was Animal Farm that made finally Orwell prosperous. His other world wide 
success was Nineteen Eighty-Four, which Orwell said was written "to alter 
other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after." Sadly 
Orwell never lived to see how successful it would become. 

Eileen O'Shaugnessy, Orwell's wife died in 1945 and in 1949 he remarried to a 
woman named Sonia Browell. Orwell's second marriage was short-lived however, 
as he died from tuberculosis in London on January 21, 1950. 

To read books by George Orwell, select from the list on the left.

Toni's NOTE :  he wrote poetry, too :

Ironic Poem About Prostitution


by George Orwell 

 

When I was young and had no sense 
In far-off Mandalay 
I lost my heart to a Burmese girl 
As lovely as the day. 

 

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet, 
Her teeth were ivory; 
I said, "for twenty silver pieces, 
Maiden, sleep with me". 

 

She looked at me, so pure, so sad, 
The loveliest thing alive, 
And in her lisping, virgin voice, 
Stood out for twenty-five.