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PLEASE NOTE. As of June 2004 these pages and the links herein are no longer being updated or maintained. Disclaimer : Oakland Unified School District is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. Author Biography:Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari in Bengal, India, on 25th June, 1903. His father, Richard, was a minor official in the Opium Department of the Government of India. The Blairs had a tradition running through the 19th Century of career employment both in the Church of England and the Colonial Civil Service, and Orwell later humorously characterized their social standing as 'Lower-Upper-Middle-Class' - that is, with all the pretensions of the well-brought-up bourgeoisie and none of the finances to match. (Satirical sketches of the extended Blair family pervade Orwell's early novels). In 1907 the family returned to England and in 1911 Blair was sent to St. Cyprian's preparatory school in Sussex. His damning portrayal of life as a St. Cyprianite in a long essay, Such, Such Were the Joys, written in 1947, drew both praise and criticism from his former classmates, and there is evidence to suggest that Orwell had exaggerated his childhood misery at the hands of the school's staff. In 1917 he became a King's Scholar at Eton, of which he retained fond memories, partly because of his involvement with the various school magazines and papers. More...
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