George Orwell - Eric Arthur Blair

George Orwell(1903- 1950), one of the greatest writer of twentieth century was born in Bengal, India (British India). He is originally called as Eric Arthur Blair but use his pen name George Orwell widely, he was an essayist, critic, novelist and journalist. 'The Times' in 2008 gave him the second position of 'The 50 greatest British Writers Since 1945'. He writes lot about social injustice and he supports democratic socialism. His father was a British Colonial Civil Servant and he follows his father's footstep he too contributed to Indian Imperial Police till 1927. Orwell is well-known for his anti- fascism, anti- communism and literary criticism. 

Name: George Orwell

George Orwell

Pen name: Eric Arthur Blair 

Born: 25 June 1903

Died: 21 January 1950

Birth place: India

Genre: Satire, Dystopia 

Major Works: Animal Farm, 1984, Homage to Catalonia, Burmese Days

Animal Farm is published in the year 1945 which is a dystopian and allegorical novel. Orwell was influenced by Spanish Civil War, he mentioned the seriousness of totalitarian government and heels of World War II in this novel. He faced many troubles for pubishing this novel but later this book brings him a great success. And in 1949, Orwell published the book 1984, it is a social science fiction and has lot of political elements present in this novel. The Time magazine includes this book among the 100 best English novels from 1923 to 2005. 

In his essay Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation because it shapes the way we think. In that essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Famous Quotes of George Orwell

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."


Books to read..