1984- 75th Anniversary

by Orwell, George

• ISBN13: 9780452262935
• ISBN10: 0452262933
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780452254268
• Edition: Anniv.
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1983-04-01
• Publisher: Plume
• More Book Details

Summary

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" revealed George Orwell as one of the twentieth century's greatest mythmakers. While the totalitarian system that provoked him into writing it has since passed into oblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. In Winston Smith's desperate struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendencies apparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universal predicament of the individual.

Author Biography

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, born in 1903 in colonial India. He attended boarding school in England, and it was there that he first became aware of the hurtful class prejudice that plagued British society, developing an early sensitivity to the uses and abuses of power. Upon graduating from Eton in 1921, Orwell signed on with the Burmese Indian Imperial Police, about which he commented: "In order to hate imperialism, you have got to be part of it." His time in Burma affected him profoundly, and he quit without explanation five years later, announcing that he was to become a writer. Finding himself nearly penniless and taking a job as a dishwasher, the young writer explored the topic of poverty firsthand in his first published book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), followed soon after by Burmese Days (1934), which recalled his time in the Imperial Police. Though his interest in the plight of individuals attempting to transcend their social roles came across in such early comic novels as Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), it wasn't until his impassioned account of the plight of English workers in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) that his new political consciousness fully blossomed. Around this time, he and his new wife joined an antifascist militia at the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, as is recounted in his Homage to Catalonia (1938). Though he is perhaps best known for his brilliant satire Animal Farm (1945) and his classic dystopian novel 1984 (1949), which followed, essay collections such as Inside the Whale (1940) reflected his continuing concern with the very real political and social circumstances of his day. Following the death of his wife in 1945, Orwell contracted tuberculosis, and soon after his second marriage, died in 1950 at the age of forty-six.