George Orwell

About the author

Born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari in 1903, George Orwell became one of the defining voices of twentieth-century English literature. Novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic, he wrote with lucid prose and unflinching social criticism, opposing totalitarianism in all its forms while championing democratic socialism. His allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) reshaped political language itself — terms like "Big Brother," "doublethink," and "Newspeak" entered everyday use.

In 2008, The Times ranked him the second-greatest British writer since 1945. He died in London in 1950.