Eileen: The Making of George Orwell

Really enjoyed this book. Cant say Blair / Orwell emerges with much credit. This in no way reflects on his writing or contribution to literature. Read in conjunction with Jacinta Buddicum book on Orwell he is tainted with the "Eton" toff superior attitude in which people are there just to be used. Eileen on the other hand comes out well if someone blind to reality of her marraige and his treatment of her. A very sad end to her life and the defects in the medical fraternity. Mistakes are buried.

While I agree with a previous reviewer that parts of this biography, particularly those about her subject’s education and her experiences at the Ministry of Food, were unnecessarily detailed and boring, I found the rest of the book deeply interesting and moving. Eileen O’Shaugnessey may not have ‘made’ George Orwell, but there can be no doubt that she kept him alive, and directly saved his life at one point during the Spanish Civil War. Apart from that, she is a very sympathetic figure, both charming and, in so many ways, admirable. I found it almost unbearably poignant that she should have died just as she was taking joy in her adopted son, the love between her and Orwell was being reawakened, and he was finally about to receive the wide recognition for his work that they had both longed for.Other reviewers have also pointed out that Topp’s theories about her subject’s influence on Orwell’s writing are only conjectures, which of course is true, and some of her claims definitely seem far-fetched, but for the most part I found them plausible. She even convinced me that it could have been Eileen, not Sonia, who was the model for Julia in 1984.

This is a welcome and long overdue biography of Orwell’s first wife. Many words have been written about his second spouse and widow Sonia, for many reasons, but Eileen has generally been neglected by writers down the years. Why? Well, Orwell and Eileen made a pact to destroy all correspondence between each other early in the relationship making it difficult for researchers to get a clear picture of the deeper relationship between them.The author has done a fine job, if sometimes, by necessity, slightly speculative of the influence of Eileen on George’s writing along with the question of their ‘open’ marriage and just what that amounted to.There is no doubt that they were devoted to each other and Eileen willingly took on a difficult, irritating and sickly genius, supporting and assisting him in every respect over their few, short years together.This may just have been one of the great literary marriages. She was certainly a match for him in most respects, even travelling out to Spain and up to the trenches to support him in the Civil War. She acted as his typist and de facto editor and may have even co-written much of Animal Farm with George.When he first met Eileen George told a friend that she was the girl he wanted to marry. He wasn’t wrong. The man was undoubtedly devastated by her untimely death which may have hastened his own early passing. Orwell has sometimes been called ‘saint like.’ Yet, there was another one at his side for his most productive and difficult years. Excellent and highly recommended book.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was very clear and well researched. The author ‘wanted to bring Eileen out of the shadows’ and show her importance as his wife for ten years and her support in his creative works. It was immensely interesting to read. It also incidentally gave me a real feel of what it must have been like to live in London during the war years and the Blitz.

This systematic, thoroughly researched biography of George Orwell’s first wife Eileen Blair has been overshadowed by Anna Funder’s more recent, subjective and at times dramatised account, “Wifedom”. The latter’s damming portrayal of Orwell, as an appallingly selfish man whose clumsy advances would nowadays trigger the wrath of the #MeToo Movement induced me to turn to Sylvia Topp’s work for a second opinion.It is true that Orwell pursued his interests with a single-minded obsession, whether it was to rush off to Spain to fight Franco’s fascist forces, or to lead an arduous life of self-sufficiency in a rundown cottage in an isolated village, rearing goats and selling eggs to make ends meet. He also seems to have made frequent passes at women, apparently regarding fidelity in marriage as unimportant, yet still deviously concealing an attempted fling with one of his wife’s so-called best friends. The fact that a fascination with young Arab girls prompted him to ask Eileen for permission to visit a Moroccan brothel is particularly disturbing. He seems callous in his lack of concern over her ill health, but perhaps because he was frequently so unwell himself, he underestimated the risks of her final operation, leaving her to die alone while he went abroad. The empathy which prompted him to comfort a traumatised stranger he came across during the London blitz did not seem to extend to his wife.Yet Sylvia Topp makes it repeatedly clear that Eileen willingly chose to devote her life to supporting Orwell for the decade of their marriage. This was despite being sufficiently ambitious to be very disappointed not to get a First at Oxford, and eventually finding an interest which could have given her a fulfilling, independent career – she was working on a Masters in the psychology of education when she met Orwell. She was conventional enough to think that, approaching thirty, “it was time” for her to get married. She also seemed to have a leaning towards achieving success vicariously through others, not only Orwell but also her high-flying brother Eric whose medical articles and books she typed and edited long before she took on the same role for Orwell.By modern standards, Eileen was not a feminist. Yet since Oxford University only started awarding women degrees in 1920, four years before she began to study there, while women only gained the right to vote in 1918, and then had to wait a decade to have the voting age reduced from 30 to 21, she possibly felt that this was sufficient clear evidence of advances in achieving equality. She was clearly not a victim but prepared to speak out, and show initiative when she really wanted to do so. Admittedly, Orwell’s frequent bouts of illness as his TB developed cramped her style, but she seems to have been an innately kind person who could not have done otherwise than care for him.The couple somehow found time for a very active social life, entertaining friends in their often uncomfortable homes, and there is a pattern in their guests’ comments on Eileen: energetic, lively and attractive. She had no shortage of admirers: while Orwell was fighting in Catalonia, she had an enjoyable social life in Barcelona, forming a close relationship with a man called George Kopp, who may have wanted to marry her. Yet when Orwell was shot, she helped to ensure he received the best possible treatment, and later saved him from arrest as a suspected communist, by contriving to give him advance warning.With her belief in Orwell’s talent, Eileen seems to have enjoyed being closely involved in his creative writing. There is evidence that her feedback led to a marked improvement in his style, which colleagues noticed without identifying the reason. The couple were intellectually very compatible, able to discuss issues on equal terms, and Orwell valued her opinion and trusted her enough to tell his publishers to deal with her, and accept her decisions in his frequent absences. There is even a suggestion that aspects of “1984”, an certainly the title of the classic, were derived from a poem which she wrote before even meeting Orwell: “End of the Century, 1984”.The couple were also bound by a rejection of materialism, concern for social justice, and perhaps a sense of there being some virtue in a life of struggle, although Sylvia Topp notes tartly how they frequently took advantage of the good will and home comforts of wealthier relatives. Ironically, by the time of Eileen’s tragically early death, Orwell’s writing was beginning to bring in a good income, although he too only lived for a further five years. They paid a high price for a shared addiction to strong black tobacco.Despite a tendency to be overdetailed and to speculate too long over minor points, to the extent that it might be advisable to skim-read the first three chapters, and later through Eileen’s final employment at the BBC, this biography proves in the main very absorbing and revealing, not only about Eileen and Orwell, but also the times in which they lived.

It is a very interesting book in itself. and also to better understand the life of George Orwell

I bought this book for my son who is a big George Orwell fan. He was really pleased with it.

I'm a huge Orwell fan and like learning about him as a person so I really enjoyed this book, despite the title being a bit misleading.  If you want to learn about his writing, this is probably not the book for you. There is relatively little about Orwell's writing and much, much more about he and Eileen as people, which I welcomed. The author did an impressive amount of research and provides many details that serve to make both of them come alive on the page.  She succeeds in finding "the elusive Eileen." She makes Orwell's first wife a full and interesting person in her own right and provides additional insights about George.  She does a wonderful job of creating a ground level view of their lives.Despite a too-detailed description of Eileen's work at the wartime Ministry of Food in London, some strained and seemingly far-fetched speculation about the impact she had on Animal Farm and 1984, and conjecture masked as certainty when the record was thin (the use of "definitely" when "perhaps" would have been more accurate), the longer I read, the more I liked this book.  It is an impressive effort, especially for her first book.  For Orwell fans, this is a nice addition.  Eileen Blair (Orwell) now has the recognition she deserves, and George Orwell's human side has a new light shined on it.  Bravo, Ms. Topp!

I purchased this book because I am interested in the life and work of George Orwell, the husband of Eileen Blair. Sylvia Topp, the author of this book, argues convincingly that Eileen had a strong influence on Orwell's writing. Among other things, Ms. Topp is convinced that Orwell gave his final book the title 1984 because 10 years prior to the novel's publication, Eileen had written a poem with the same title. This biography presents a moving portrait of a fascinating woman whose life was far too short.

A good-hearted, diligent, amateur historian gives her nicely written biography of a bright, lively woman born with the name Eileen O'Shaughnessy.Ms. O'Shaughnessy came to be the first wife of Eric Blair, better known as the writer George Orwell. Sylvia Topp, her biographer, is keen to remove her from her present obscurity and identify O'Shaughnessy as an integral basis of the success that was to eventually shower the great writer. In this, Topp succeeds.There is much to like here and many things about George Orwell that are helpfully explained. However, there is also a great deal of conjuncture that sometimes drifts into outright guessing. Also, the importance to today's reader of past love affairs, difficult living and travel situations, bureaucratic in-fighting at government jobs, and almost ceaseless bad health is limited, or so I think.