hello everybody and welcome to this first video in a brand new series on Animal Farm by George Orwell
everything I go through in these videos comes from mr. brass guy to Animal Farm available in
paperback Kindle form and eBook form as well so follow the links in the description to pick up
the copy it was written by Carrie Lewis aka mrs. spag on Twitter and it really is a complete and
brilliant guide to this text so in today's video we're going to talk about the author George Orwell
and whenever we're looking at biographical details about a writer we only want to look at details
which will help us in our understanding of the text itself so that's what we're going to do
today George Orwell was born in 1903 and died in 1950 and actually is not called or was not
called George Orwell his name was Ehrich Arthur Blair but he wrote under the pen name of George
Orwell he was a novelist and essayist a critic and a journalist who was born in British India
where his father worked in the civil service and when all well was one his mother brought him and
his two sisters to live in England now despite the fact that his great grandmother married an
earl his parents did not own any property and were dependent on the civil service for an income what
this meant was that they could not afford to send him to a public school by which we mean
a selective fee-paying independent school without financial support Orwell was a bright child and he
won a partial scholarship to a preparatory school in Eastbourne where he boarded for five years he
was a budding writer he composed two poems that were published in the local paper whilst he was
at school but at school his awareness of the class system increased when he noticed that the richer
students were treated better than the poorer ones and he hated his time at st. Cyprian and actually
successfully won scholarships for Wellington College and for Eton he attended Wellington in
spring 1917 and so the place became available at Eton where he was much happier at Eton he
helped to produce the college magazine and other publications the school experiences developed his
awareness of class divisions in society obviously a topic very important to Animal Farm when he left
school all well joined the India Imperial police force and in 1922 was posted to Burma he had
always been an independent thinker so he learnt fluent Burmese however the better he got to know
the native people the more he felt guilty about his role in a British Empire colony and in Animal
Farm of course mr. Jones and the pigs exploit and maltreat the weak in the same way that some
British colonizers exploited a Mau treated the Burmese his first novel Burmese days which was
published in 1934 is based on his experiences in Burma and bitterly describes British prejudice
and corruption with air for see that all well did not share contemporary beliefs about the benefits
of colonialism the concept of abusing power is a universal thing not just one limited to communist
Russia and at this point we can understand why by the late 1920s Orwell considered himself an
anarchist that is someone who does not recognize government Authority in 1927 Orwell became very
ill with the mosquito-borne fever so he returned home to England on leave and at this point decided
to leave the imperial police force to become a writer the next stage of all was life is
described in down and out in Paris and London a fascinating book I love this book and really
recommend you have a read of it if it if the description I'm about to give you piques your
interest this was a book published in 1933 and in this book in this manhwa all well describes how
disguised as a [ __ ] he explored the poorest parts of London he got to know its inhabitants
and made notes about his experiences and then he spent two years in Paris where he continued to
write supporting himself by taking the low paid jobs such as dishwashing which he describes with
amazing detail in his book he also wrote articles about unemployment and the social conditions of
the poor so the theme of poverty was emerging as a deeply interesting subject we're down and out
in Paris and London was published all well chose to publish under the pen name of George Orwell
because he did not want to embarrass his family about his time as a Trump so that explains why
Eric Arthur Blair writes under the pen name or wrote under the pen name George Orwell upon his
return to England Orwell wrote articles and novels supporting himself with a range of jobs including
teaching working in a secondhand bookshop but he continued his occasional explorations described
explorations disguised as a [ __ ] and did low paid jobs that provided material for his
writing at one point he unsuccessfully tried to get himself arrested in the hope that he would
be sent to prison so he could write about that experience his novel a clergyman's daughter was
published in 1935 and in 1936 all well accepted a commission to writes about social conditions
in the north of England he spent a month in Wigan visiting the poor investigating how they lived and
worked and he first saw the effects of overwork and hunger that he later describes in Animal
Farm as well as visiting coal mines he attended meetings of the Communist Party and formed a low
opinion of Oswald Mosley the leader of the British Union of fascists all wows experiences culminated
in the road to Wigan pier which was published in 1937 the first half describes his investigations
while the second half is a controversial essay in which he describes his middle-class background and
the development of his political conscience at this point he considered himself to be
a socialist and challenged British attitudes towards socialism all Welles political views
were so strong that at the end of 1936 the same year he married Eileen O'Shaughnessy he decided
to go to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War we see him here in this picture and he fought in
the Spanish Civil War he wanted to defend the left-wing republican government against General
Franco the fascist leader supported by Hitler in Spain Orwell fought alongside members of an anti
Stalinist movement he saw active service and survived being shot in the throat by a sniper
when he was in Barcelona the situation began to deteriorate as Soviet backed communists began to
suppress their political opponents who included socialists and the Communists pressed spread
lies and propaganda accusing the anti Stalinists of collaborating with the fascists we know that
the use of propaganda can be seen throughout the character of Squealer in Animal Farm consequently
all will and aileen were forced to flee Spain in fear of their lives and all those experiences
in the Spanish Civil War and his disillusionment with the Communist Party are described in homage
to Catalonia published in 1938 all well now hated any form of totalitarianism socialism communism
or fascism and these views for the underlying ideology of Animal Farm and his final novel
1984 when world war ii broke out all well was declared unfit for military service by the Medical
Board because of the condition of his lungs for Seoul from 1941 to 1943 he worked for the BBC's
eastern service countering Nazi propaganda and it was around this time that he started to write
Animal Farm in November 1943 he became literary editor of the Tribune and his literary output
as a journalist became prolific he wrote numerous reviews and articles so it's at this point that we
can appreciate the significance of the political context we already know how Orwell's life helped
to shape his views and the Animal Farm was an attack on the Soviet regime British politics at
the time also impacted on all Welsh life initially publishers refused to accept Animal Farm a fairy
story as it was called because the Soviet Union was a war ally and in 1945 the year the war ended
and Eileen died the novella was finally published in the UK a year later is published in America and
became an immediate success increasingly so from 1947 when the Cold War so now a well-known writer
all well mixed journalism with contributions to literary magazines he worked on his last
and possibly most famous novel 1984 which was published in June 1949 suffering from
tuberculosis Orwell married standard Brownell from his hospital bed in October 1949 and died three
months later at the age of 46 so I hope you found this video useful lots of interesting details
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