George Orwell is widely considered one of the greatest writers of the past century. Although his novels
1984 and
Animal Farm are now the most widely-read of his works, Orwell was primarily a nonfiction writer. The occasionally radical political content in his essays, memoirs, and journalistic works brought him some censure during his life, but they now make up one of the most celebrated bodies of work in the English language.
Sonia Brownell Orwell, as a young woman, was responsible for transcribing and editing the copy text for the first edition of the Winchester Malory as assistant to the eminent medievalist at Manchester University, Eugene Vinaver. Brownell first met Orwell when she worked as the assistant to Cyril Connolly, a friend of his from Eton College, at the literary magazine Horizon. The two were married in October 1949, only three months before Orwell’s death from tuberculosis.
Ian Angus, a widely recognized Orwell scholar for decades, helped establish the Orwell Archive at UniversityCollege, London and, in 1968, worked with Sonia Orwell in editing Orwell's Collected Journalism, Essays and Letters published by Secker & Warburg in England.
