George Orwell and 1984: Background information when reading Julia

George Orwell and 1984

This article relates to Julia

Sandra Newman's novel Julia is based on George Orwell's classic work of fiction 1984, retold from the point of view of the protagonist's lover. Who, though, was George Orwell, and how did 1984 come to be?

Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903, in Bengal, India. His father, Richard, was employed in the India Civil Service as a customs official in the Opium Department. His mother, Ida, moved to England in 1904 with Eric and his older sister, Marjorie, in tow, settling in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He attended school locally until the age of eight, when he was sent to a private prep school in Sussex. After graduation, he attended Wellington for one term before studying at Eton for the rest of his education. He then traveled to Asia and worked in Burma (Myanmar) as a police officer before returning to England in 1928 to concentrate on his fledgling writing career. It was then that he started publishing under the pen name "George Orwell," producing hundreds of essays, poems, book reviews and editorials on politics and literature. His works became so well-known that he eventually started using the pseudonym full-time, with only family referring to him by his birth name.

In 1936, Orwell traveled to Barcelona to fight against Franco's Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War but became disillusioned by the political infighting prevalent within the communist ranks. He was shot in the neck by a sniper in 1937, almost dying, and while he was recuperating, the Stalinists—one faction of the communists, opposed to the pro-Trotsky Poum party with which Orwell had aligned himself—tried to arrest him. He escaped, eventually returning to England, but his experiences during the Spanish Civil War had a major influence on his subsequent writing.

Orwell was diagnosed with tuberculosis and hospitalized in 1938. When World War II broke out, he was declared unfit for duty and consequently spent the war years as a journalist and BBC radio contributor. It was during this time that he penned one of his best-known works: Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. The book, an allegory about the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise to power, met with stiff resistance within the publishing community due to its political content, but was eventually published in 1945. It was an instant world-wide success—except in the USSR, where it was banned (unsurprisingly, Stalin took offense to being characterized as a power-hungry pig in the novel).

By 1947 Orwell's health was rapidly failing, but he pushed to complete a manuscript that would explore themes of "the hegemonic nature of power…as well as his philosophy about the intersection of language, thought and propaganda," according to an article on history.net. The author wanted to name this masterwork The Last Man in Europe, but his publisher convinced him to change the title to 1984. It went to press in June 1949; Orwell died of tuberculosis a few months later, in January 1950.

The author intended the book to serve as a cautionary tale against totalitarianism and to counter some of the trends he saw rising across the world that he felt could lead to the rise of authoritarian regimes similar to the one ruling the USSR. In his lifetime he'd seen the horrors dictators such as Franco, Stalin and Hitler could inflict on their populations, and he wanted to write something he hoped would make a difference.

And although the book is more than 70 years old, its warnings remain relevant today, as authoritarian governments continue to rise up around the world. The book also remains highly influential; the terms Orwell coined (Big Brother, newspeak, prole, Thought Police, unperson, etc.) have entered and remained in our vernacular. George Packer, writing for the Atlantic, argues that "It's almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or perversions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984." The novel has also proved prescient, as many of the "advancements" Orwell imagined in 1984, such as omnipresent surveillance cameras and listening devices, have indeed become realities.

Original US (left) and UK (right) covers of 1984 courtesy of Penguin Series Design

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This "beyond the book article" relates to Julia. It originally ran in January 2024 and has been updated for the September 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.