Orwell, George (1903–1950)

George Orwell was a British novelist, essayist, and social analyst. His writings, especially Animal Farm and 1984, had the effect of combating socialism, yet he was a committed socialist who never explicitly questioned socialism in the years immediately before his death at a comparatively young age. From the mid-1930s on, Orwell became increasingly preoccupied with the rise of totalitarianism. Orwell saw totalitarianism as a new slave state that would abolish capitalism, would be far worse than capitalism, and would not institute anything he would choose to call socialism.

Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in India, where his father was an official in the British imperial administration. He was raised in England and won a scholarship to Eton, Britain's most prestigious private school. On ...