George Orwell # George Orwell, aka, Eric Arthur Blair, (1903, - Bengal, India, - 1950, London, England) English novelist, essayist, and critic, famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), the latter a profound anti-utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule. (Britannica) Laura Beers (Norton) writes that in the nearly seventy-five years since George Orwell’s death, his writing has been appropriated for various ideological ends.