Concept
George Orwell
Overview
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in industrial Northern England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in both popular and political culture, with the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—becoming part of the English language, as are many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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His first writings, which dealt exclusively with the money question belong to the time of the most violent controversy between the Bank of England, which had on its side the ministers and the war party, and its opponents about whom were centered the parliamentary opposition, the Whigs and the Peace party. They appeared as immediate forerunners of the famous Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, in which Ricardo’s…
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
States what George Orwell is; the author is tied to George Orwell in the knowledge graph.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the "Réformistes." (a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French Restoration 1814 to 1830. (b) This applies chiefly to Germany where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are moreover, extensive beet-root sugar…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
The author is tied to George Orwell in the knowledge graph.
Tolstoï's levelling philosophy began long before he had the crisis of melancholy commemorated in that wonderful document of his entitled 'My Confession,' which led the way to his more specifically religious works. In his masterpiece 'War and Peace,'--assuredly the greatest of human novels,--the rôle of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little soldier named Karataïeff, so helpful, so cheerful, and so devout that…
William James, Talks To Teachers On Psychology
Close in meaning to George Orwell; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed George Orwell
- Roger Scruton
- The Guardian
- A. J. Ayer
- Noam Chomsky
- Christopher Hitchens
- Dwight Macdonald
- Aldous Huxley
- François Rabelais
- Aleksandr Dugin
- Emma Goldman
- Science of morality
- Alan Wood (author)
Related ideas
- Fascism
- James Wood (critic)
- Anarchism
- Anglicanism
- Gustave Flaubert
- Stanford University Press
- Harper (publisher)
- Herman Melville
- George Woodcock
- Atheism
- Imperialism
- Neologism
- James Joyce
- Jonathan Swift
- Joseph Conrad
- Karl Marx
- Language
- Spanish Civil War
- Eastern world
- Marxism
- The Observer
- Metropolitan Police
- Labour Party (UK)
- The Guardian
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Descriptivist theory of names.