The creator of Animal Farm and 1984 lived a life as original and strange as the books themselves.
Orwell got word in August that Animal Farm had not only sold 50,000 copies in the US, but was also now a book-of-the-month club selection, generating an additional 400,000 in sales. In 1946, only Dr. Spock would sell more books.
Orwell was already up to other romantic intrigue. He had met a much younger and beautiful Sonia Brownell when she was an editor at Horizon. Never one for subtlety, he had already proposed to her previously, basically saying that even if she found him unappealing, he wasn’t going to live much longer.
As an infamous non-believer it was initially difficult to find a cemetery that would accept the writer’s remains until influential friends interceded and had him interred at All Saints Church, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire. Strangely perverse, even to the end, Orwell had requested that he be buried in the nearest convenient cemetery according to the rites of the Church of England.
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