George Orwell (1903-50) was born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, Bengal, where his father worked for the Opium Department of the Government of India. He had a relatively comfortable middle-class upbringing in England, first attending a private preparatory school and then winning a scholarship to Eton, an exclusive “public” secondary school (the name in England for a private school). On leaving Eton in 1921 he joined the Indian Imperial Police; he was posted to Burma in 1922. After five years of service, however, he resigned, unable any longer to stomach doing “the dirty work of Empire” and harboring an ambition to be a writer (Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” p. 501). On his return to Europe, he spent a year and a half living in poverty in London and Paris, trying to share the life of the destitute and oppressed and doggedly teaching himself to write. In 1933, using the name George Orwell, he published his first book, based on these experiences, Down and Out in Paris and London. The next three years saw Orwell publish three novels, Burmese Days (1934), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936); he honed his skills as a reviewer and essayist during these years too.
