WRITER

George Orwell

1903 - 1950

Photo of George Orwell

Icon of person George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was a British novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell, a name inspired by his favourite place, the River Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (i.e. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of George Orwell has received more than 18,160,086 page views. His biography is available in 140 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 131 in 2019). George Orwell is the 56th most popular writer (down from 36th in 2019), the 5th most popular biography from India (down from 3rd in 2019) and the most popular Indian Writer.

George Orwell is most famous for his dystopian novel 1984.

Memorability Metrics

  • 18M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 80.00

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 140

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.33

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.89

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Nineteen Eighty-Four
Fiction / Classics, Fiction / Literary
<p><i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> revealed George Orwell as one of the twentieth century's greatest mythmakers. While the totalitarian system that provoked him into writing it has since passed into oblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. In Winston Smith's desperate struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendencies apparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universal predicament of the individual.<br> <br> (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)<br>  </p>
Down and Out in Paris and London
Biography & Autobiography
'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in the vile 'Hôtel X', living alongside tramps, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts - in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like. Includes an introduction by Dervla Murphy, as well as definitive footnotes assigned to Orwell.
Animal Farm
Domestic animals
Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works.
The Road to Wigan Pier
Biography & Autobiography
A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain. Includes illustrations, explanatory footnotes, and an introduction by Richard Hoggart.
Burmese Days
Homage to Catalonia

Among WRITERS

Among writers, George Orwell ranks 56 out of 7,302Before him are Octave Mirbeau, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sappho, Thomas Mann, Mark Twain, and Gabriel García Márquez. After him are Astrid Lindgren, Oscar Wilde, Stefan Zweig, Marcel Proust, Giacomo Casanova, and Ayn Rand.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1903, George Orwell ranks 1After him are Olav V of Norway, John von Neumann, Konrad Lorenz, Aram Khachaturian, Theodor W. Adorno, Georges Simenon, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Mark Rothko, Habib Bourguiba, C. F. Powell, and Fernandel. Among people deceased in 1950, George Orwell ranks 1After him are George Bernard Shaw, Gustaf V of Sweden, Joseph Schumpeter, Johannes V. Jensen, Vaslav Nijinsky, Albert Lebrun, Heinrich Mann, Willis Carrier, Marcel Mauss, Norman Haworth, and Vallabhbhai Patel.

Others Born in 1903

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Others Deceased in 1950

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In India

Among people born in India, George Orwell ranks 5 out of 1,861Before him are Mahatma Gandhi (1869), Narendra Modi (1950), Ashoka (-304), and Rajneesh (1931). After him are Amitabh Bachchan (1942), Rabindranath Tagore (1861), A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1931), Jawaharlal Nehru (1889), B. R. Ambedkar (1891), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887), and Ramakrishna (1836).

Among WRITERS In India

Among writers born in India, George Orwell ranks 1After him are Rabindranath Tagore (1861), Rudyard Kipling (1865), Valmiki (-80), Kālidāsa (400), Salman Rushdie (1947), Tulsidas (1532), Ghalib (1797), Savitribai Phule (1831), Meera (1498), Premchand (1880), and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811).