George Orwell

Early Life:
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. His great-grandfather Charles Blair had been a wealthy plantation owner in Jamaica and his grandfather a clergyman. Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not. Blair's father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Civil Service. Blair described his family as "lower-upper-middle class". His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin), had a French father who was involved in speculative ventures in Burma where she grew up. She took her son Eric to England when he was one year old and apart from a three-month visit to England in 1907 Richard Blair did not enter his son's life until Eric was nine years old. Eric had two sisters; Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger. Blair's mother settled at Henley on Thames in 1905 after she bought her son back to England. He was brought up without paternal influence, his father remaining in India for most of his early childhood, in the company of his mother and sisters. His mother's diary for 1905 indicates a lively round of social activity and artistic interests. They moved to Shiplake before World War I, and Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially Jacintha Buddicom. On their first encounter he was standing on his head in a field, claiming "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up". They read and wrote poetry, and dreamt of intellectual adventures. He told her that he might write a book in similar style to that of H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia. Simultaneously, he enjoyed shooting, fishing, and birdwatching with Jacintha’s brother and sister.