Animal Farm 2
...prominence in the late 1940's as the author of two
brilliant satires. He wrote documentaries, essays, and
criticism during the 1930's and later established himself as
one of the most important and influential voices of the
century. Eric Arthur Blair (later George Orwell) was born in
1903 in the Indian Village Motihari, which lies near to the border of
Nepal. At that time India was a part of the British Empire, and Blair's
father Richard, held a post as an agent in the Opium Department of the
Indian Civil Service. Blair's paternal grandfather, too, had been part
of the British Raj, and had served in the Indian Army. Eric's mother,
Ida Mabel Blair, the daughter of a French tradesman, was about eighteen
years younger than her husband Richard Blair was. Eric had an elder
sister called Marjorie. The Blairs led a relatively privileged and
fairly pleasant existence, in helping to administer the Empire.
Although the Blair family was not very wealthy, Orwell later described
them ironically as "lower-upper-middle class (Gross, p.109)." They
owned no property and had no extensive investments; they were like many
middle-class English families of the time, totally dependent on the
British Empire for their livelihoo! d and prospects. Even though the
father continued to work in India until he retired in 1912, in 1907,
the family returned to England and lived at Henley. With some
difficulty, Blair's parents sent their son to a private preparatory
school in Sussex at the age of eight. At the age of thirteen, he won a
scholarship to Wellington, and soon after another to Eaton, the famous
public school (Gross, p.112). His parents had forced him to work at a
dreary preparatory school, and now after...
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