George Orwell requested that no biography of him be written. His widow, Sonia Brownell, honoured this wish for a time but eventually commissioned Bernard Crick to write a complete biography of her husband, asking friends to cooperate. George Orwell: A Life was published in 1980. [1]
After a three-year battle against illness writer George Orwell died of a lung haemorrhage in a London hospital early in the morning of 21 January 1950. “At times,” says biographer Bernard Crick, “he almost literally cared for his writing more than his life, certainly more than his comfort and physical well-being.” At age 46, he was ravaged by tuberculosis after years of overexertion, hardship, and self-neglect.
George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in Bengal, British India. For most of his career, he was best known for his journalism, but modern readers are now introduced to him as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949). His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell always liked women and had many girlfriends. In June 1936 he married Eileen O’Shaughnessy. After trying to have children they learned that he was unable to and in June 1944 adopted a three-week-old boy they named Richard Horatio. Eileen died in March 1945 when she was 39. Orwell was lonely after Eileen’s death and searched for a second wife. At this time, his health began to decline, and he received the diagnosis of tuberculosis in December 1947. In mid-1949, he met Sonia Brownell, they became engaged in September, and the wedding took place in his hospital the following month, October. Sonia took charge of Orwell’s affairs and attended him diligently until his death 3 months later. Her act of marrying a sick wealthy man, when his death was almost certain, cast some doubt on her intentions.
Orwell wished to receive an Anglican burial in the graveyard of the closest church to wherever he happened to die. But the graveyards in central London had no space so his remains were interred in the churchyard of All Saints’ Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire. Orwell’s gravestone bears the epitaph: “Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born June 25th 1903, died January 21st 1950”; no mention is made on the gravestone of his more famous pen name.