Orwell moved to Burma in 1922, where he served as an Assistant Superintendent of Police for five years before he resigned because of his growing dislike for British Imperialism. In 1928, Orwell moved to Paris and began a series of low paying jobs. In 1929, he moved to London, again living in what he termed “fairly severe poverty.” These experiences provided the material for his first novel, Down and Out in Paris and London, which he placed with a publisher in 1933.
About this time, while Orwell was teaching in a small private school in Middlesex, he came down with his first bout of pneumonia due to tuberculosis, a condition would plague him throughout his life and require hospitalization again in 1938, 1947, and 1950.
In 1933, Orwell gave up teaching and spent almost a year in Southwold writing his next book, Burmese Days. During this time, he worked part time in a bookshop, where he met his future wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy. He and Eileen were he married in 1936, shortly before he moved to Spain to write newspaper articles about the Spanish Civil War.
In Spain, Orwell found what he had been searching for—a true socialist state. He joined the struggle against the Fascist party but had to flee when the group with which he was associated was falsely accused of secretly helping the Fascists.
By 1939, Orwell had returned to England. In 1941, he took a position with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as the person in charge of broadcasting to India and Southeast Asia. Orwell disliked this job immensely, being, as he was, in charge of disseminating propaganda to these British colonies—an act that went against both his nature and his political philosophy. In 1943, Orwell took a job more to his liking, as the literary editor of The Tribune.
Shortly after Orwell and Eileen adopted a son in 1944, Orwell became a war correspondent for the Observer in Paris and Cologne, Germany. Tragically, Eileen died in the beginning of that year, just before the publication of one of his most important novels, Animal Farm. Despite the loss of his wife and his own battle with poor health, Orwell continued his writing and completed the revision of 1984 in 1948. It was published early the next year with great success.
Orwell remarried in 1949 to Sonia Brownell, only a year before his own death of tuberculosis. He is buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire.
