George Orwell
author profile
born
June 25, 1903
died
January 21, 1950
gender
male
place of birth
Motihari, Bihar, India
website
genre
Literature & Fiction
influences
W. Somerset Maugham, Trotsky, Dickens, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Huxley, Henry Fielding, Zola, Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, Tom Wintringham, Yevgeny Zamyatin, James Joyce, Upton Sinclair
about this author
Eric Arthur Blair, known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. Noted as a novelist and critic as well as a political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. He is best known for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general, and Stalinism in particular: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both were written and published towards the end of his life.
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avg rating: 3.90
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1984 by George Orwell avg rating 4.03 — 127,488 ratings — published 1949 182 editions |
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Animal Farm/1984 by George Orwell avg rating 3.95 — 3,613 ratings — published 2003 18 editions |
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Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell avg rating 4.02 — 3,128 ratings — published 1933 33 editions |
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Homage to Catalonia (Harvest Book) by George Orwell avg rating 4.16 — 1,951 ratings — published 1938 32 editions |
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Burmese Days by George Orwell avg rating 3.75 — 938 ratings — published 1934 22 editions |
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell avg rating 3.88 — 765 ratings — published 1999 21 editions |
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A Collection of Essays by George Orwell avg rating 4.29 — 562 ratings — published 1954 4 editions |
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The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell avg rating 3.81 — 576 ratings — published 1937 17 editions |
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Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell avg rating 4.18 — 473 ratings — published 1950 3 editions |
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Why I Write by George Orwell avg rating 4.09 — 443 ratings — published 2004 4 editions |
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"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
— George Orwell
4 editions— George Orwell
tags:
truth
423 people liked it
"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
— George Orwell (1984)
4 editions
— George Orwell (1984)
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. "
— George Orwell
4 editions
— George Orwell
polls
Sometimes the first line of a book just grabs you by the nostrils and drags your fool head into its pages, preventing escape in any way, shape or form. Which of these opening lines has its phalanges most firmly planted in your nasal cavities?
"He— for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it— was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
“'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.'”
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
"Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden."
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
“'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'”
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
"What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?"
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
"Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation."
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Neuromancer by William Gibson
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - 'To Whom It May Concern' - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
"My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years"
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
"'Barabbas came to us by sea', the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature."
The Debut by Anita Brookner
The Debut by Anita Brookner
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Bah! Foolish poll-maker-person! The nostril seizing power of these paltry lines is minimal, at best! Look to the comments section where I shall carefully type out my choice, which you have so imprudently omitted!
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topics mentioning this author
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Book Challenge: Stephanie's 2009 Book Challenge | 6 | 64 | 03/04/2009 10:50AM | |
| The Book Challenge: Michelle Kay's Reads 2009 | 4 | 24 | 04/17/2009 12:42AM | |
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| The Book Challenge: Luann's 2009 Challenge - Author and Title A-Z | 51 | 173 | 05/23/2009 04:35PM | |
| The Book Challenge: 7 Classics Challenge | 75 | 427 | 05/27/2009 08:10AM | |
| The Next Best Boo...: Joy's Personal Reading Goals | 15 | 63 | 29 days ago, 08:57AM | |
| The Next Best Boo...: My Summer 2009 Reading Goal | 4 | 18 | 28 days ago, 05:05PM |
