George Orwell

George Orwell

George Orwell is the author of the enduringly popular books Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – now as relevant as ever, listen to Orwell's classics as audiobooks...
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George Orwell (1903-1950) was an acclaimed British novelist and essayist. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was Orwell’s first major work. Burmese Days followed in 1934. His best known works came later, Animal Farm in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-Four (or ‘1984’ as it is sometimes known) was published in 1949. Orwell is also the author of Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938), and poetry now available as an anthology volume.

When Orwell began publishing his work, he assumed ‘George Orwell’ as a pen name. He was born Eric Arthur Blair. Orwell’s novels, non-fiction books, and myriad essays are of a distinctive style blending a sort of political reportage with picturesque description. Orwell says in his essay, Why I Write (1946), that he wrote his first poem at the age of four or five.

When Orwell was young he wrote poems, short stories, a play, and he kept “a sort of diary existing only in the mind” where he allowed himself to imagine descriptive versions of what was happening around him. Orwell says this practice helped him uncover the style of writing he sought to produce.

Orwell was the son of a British civil servant based in what was then British India. It was in India that Orwell was born, on 25 June 1903. In the first year or so of his life, his mother returned to England. Orwell later attended Eton on a scholarship. Aldous Huxley was one of Orwell’s teachers during his time at Eton. Upon leaving school Orwell spent a brief period serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Orwell resigned his position to become a writer.

Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in 1936 and they were together until she died in 1945. They had a son, Richard. Orwell’s second marriage was to Sonia Brownell. They were married a short time before his death and Brownell inherited Orwell’s estate. Sonia is the subject of a book, The Girl from the Fiction Department (2003). Orwell died of tuberculosis on 21 January 1950 in London. He is buried in the church yard of The Church of All Saints in Oxfordshire.

George Orwell Audiobooks

Down and Out in Paris and London cover art
Burmese Days cover art
Animal Farm cover art
1984 cover art
Keep the Aspidistra Flying cover art
The Road to Wigan Pier cover art
Homage to Catalonia cover art
George Orwell: The Complete Poetry cover art
George Orwell said it was the Spanish war and other events of 1936-37 that solidified his political views, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism,” he wrote in his essay Why I Write. His politics and associations saw him monitored for more than two decades by Britain’s spy agency MI5 – Orwell was once described by Britain’s secret intelligence service as “a bit of an anarchist”, the agency noted he held strong left-wing views, “but is a long way from orthodox communism”.

Orwell’s life, in the lead up to his most famous novels, included time spent documenting the lives of poverty-stricken miners in northern England, working as a dishwasher in French hotels, fighting against the Franco Nationalists in Spain, and working on war time broadcasts of British propaganda into India for the BBC in the early 1940s. Orwell left the BBC in 1943 to return to his “normal work of writing and journalism”. In his letter of resignation he thanked the BBC for the opportunity, saying however that “for some time past I have been conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result”. These experiences together with Orwell’s political views informed his later work.

“I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound,” he said in Why I Write. Orwell spoke also of his motivation when writing, “My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.”

Audiobook Reviews — Animal Farm by George Orwell

In 1945, Orwell’s novel Animal Farm was published, cementing his status as both a literary and political force. This thought-provoking socio-political allegory, set in a farmyard, is a commentary on power, struggle, and revolution – a warning against the tyranny of totalitarianism. It is a political critique that, thanks to human nature, has stood the test of time, remaining relevant to contemporary audiences. It reminds us there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship, and leads us to ponder that if all animals are equal, why then are allowed to be more equal than others? Listen to Simon Callow’s performance of this George Orwell classic.

Audiobook Review — Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell

Big Brother is watching you. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984) is political fiction published in 1949. This literary masterpiece provides an analysis of power and control in an imagined dystopian future. At the time of its release, a critic for TIME magazine described Nineteen-Eighty Four as Orwell’s “finest work of fiction”. Let talented British actor Andrew Wincott take you to Oceania, one of three super-states that make up the post-war world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Meet Winston and Julia and be drawn into their life, their love, and their rebellion from Oceania’s omnipresent surveillance, the anti-individualist Thought Police, and the Ministry of Truth’s manipulative propaganda — start listening to the Nineteen Eighty-Four audiobook.