On this day in 1950 George Orwell died, aged forty-six. Whatever Orwell achieved in his last years seems over-balanced by what he suffered. Against the acclaim earned by the two famous novels -- Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 just seven months before Orwell died -- stands a withering series of personal challenges. In 1945, a little more than a year after their adoption of a one-month-old boy (their only child), Orwell's wife died on the operating table. As the severity of his tuberculosis became clear, Orwell searched with increasing desperation for a wife who might accept the certain roles of nurse and mother and the likely role of widow ... FULL STORY »
