Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)

Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950), who chose the pen name George Orwell from the River Orwell in Suffolk, resigned from the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, sickened by British colonial oppression. Living in voluntary poverty among the down-and-out in Paris and London (*Down and Out in Paris and London*), Orwell dedicated his writing to democratic socialism and the eradication of lies.

Fighting with the Republican POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Orwell was shot through the throat by a fascist sniper and narrowly escaped execution in Communist purges, an experience that forged his fierce anti-totalitarianism (*Homage to Catalonia*). In 1945, his satirical beast fable Animal Farm exposed the betrayal of the Russian Revolution by Stalin. Living in solitary isolation on the Scottish island of Jura while succumbing to tuberculosis, Orwell completed Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), coining terms that became immortal defenses of human freedom: Big Brother, Thought Police, Doublethink, and 2 + 2 = 5.