George Orwell, the English novelist and journalist, was born 111 years ago today. Orwell’s work is marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism and commitment to democratic socialism. He was ahead of his time and reflected the themes in the news headlines to this very day. Considered perhaps the 20th centurys best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Orwells work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including Cold War, Big Brother, thought police, doublethink and thoughtcrime. All his themes are as contemporary today as when Orwell wrote them. On anarchism, Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier: I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone. Orwell died in 1950 of tuberculosis at age 46. Here, Orwell discusses his masterpiece, “1984,” with this final warning.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:06:51 +0000
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