num_pages: 496
description: Winner of the 2004 Whitbread Prize for Biography"D. J. Taylor has written not only the best recent biography of George Orwell . . . but also one of the cleverest studies of the relationship of that life to the written word."	 -The Washington Post Book World In the last fifty years, Animal Farm and 1984 have sold more than forty million copies, and "Orwellian" is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature, and language. D. J. Taylor's magisterial assessment cuts through George Orwell's iconic status to reveal a bitter critic who concealed a profound totalitarian streak and whose progress through the literary world of the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by the myths he built around himself.Drawing on previously unseen material, Orwell is a strikingly human portrait of the writer too often embalmed as a secular saint. This biography is as vibrant, powerful, and resonant as its extraordinary subject.
language: English
title: Orwell
titlecomplete: Orwell
characters: Victor Gollancz, Nancy Mitford, D.J. Taylor, T.S. Eliot, Gordon Comstock, George Orwell, Cyril Connolly
genres: Biography, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 230
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Whitbread Award
category: Biography
publisher: Holt Paperbacks