Many years later, he would recall his time at St Cyprian's with biting resentment in the essay 'Such, Such Were the Joys', describing the stifling limits placed on his development by the Warden. Blair attended St Cyprian's on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. He never wrote of his recollections of it, but he must have impressed the teachers very favourably, for two years later he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. He would later describe his family's background as 'lower-upper-middle class.'Īt the age of six, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley-on-Thames, which his sister had attended before him. Eric had an older sister named Marjorie, and a younger sister named Avril. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair, brought him to Britain at the age of one. There Blair's father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked for the opium department of the Civil Service. He is best known for two novels written towards the end of his life: Nineteen Eighty-Four.Įric Blair was born on Jto an Anglo-Indian family in Motihari, Bihar, in India, during the period when India was part of the British Empire under the British Raj.

Noted as a political and cultural commentator, as well as an accomplished novelist, Orwell is among the most widely-admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903–January 21, 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was a British author and journalist.

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