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In 1922, when Orwell was 22 years old, he joined
the Imperial Indian Police Force and went to Burma where he remained for
the next five years. He wrote about his experiences in his novel ' Burmese
Days'. He the returned to England in 1928 with an aim to pursue writing as
a career. He spent the next three years living in self- imposed poverty in
the company of tramps, destitutes and other people who he assumed made up
the entire working class. During this period, he wrote some experimental
novels which he later described as unreadable. Finally in 1932, forced by
poverty he became a schoolteacher. His book 'Down and Out in Paris and
London' was accepted the following year. This was when he wrote under the
name of George Orwell, the combined names of England's patron saint St.
George and a small river, because he was worried that a poor reception of
the novel would damage his career as a writer.
In the following years he worked as a
bookseller's assistant and a schoolmaster and continued writing novels as
well. He even went to a coal-mining town in order to see the effect of the
depression on the miners and he wrote about it in 'The road to Wigan Pier'.
He then married Eileen O' Shaughnessy who was a psychology student and an
Oxford Graduate.
Orwell then went to Barcelona and fought bravely
in the civil war until he was wounded by a bullet, which damaged one of his
vocal chords leading to a temporary loss of his voice. He was relieved of
his duties and on his return to England was shocked to see how the leftist
press in England did not allow him to write about what was really happening
in Spain.
In 1943 Orwell began writing Animal Farm a
parable, which merged his clear writing style with political purpose. When
it was released, Orwell became famous instantly. But his joy was short
lived. Soon after the success of his book, he received a letter informing
of the death of his wife. She had died under anesthesia before what was
supposed to be a very routine operation.
Orwell, who had been suffering many years from
Tuberculosis, now took his adopted son Richard to the remote island of Tura,
in Scotland. There he wrote another of his very popular novels,
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) which was also an instant success. He knew he wouldn't live
very long so he married the beautiful Sonia Brownell, editor of a London
magazine so that she could be guardian to his son. He died four months
later of a complication that arose due to his tuberculosis at the early age
of 47 and was buried in the village churchyard in Sutton Courtney,
Berkshire.
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