Orwell had to be invented. The pseudonym—he was born Eric Blair—was very likely a tool for preserving his privacy as well as a psychological ruse, part of an effort to get himself writing in a certain style; his writing as Orwell stood in contrast to the work he did as Eric Blair, allowing him to let go of sentimental propensities that had marred his early work. “One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s personality,” he wrote in “Why I Write.” Surely the pseudonym played some role in that effacement.
