Eileen: The Making of Orwell
is the first on this extraordinary woman who has been until now unjustly overlooked. It examines the Blairs' nine year marriage, from a tiny village where they grew vegetables and tended their own goats and chickens, through the dangers of the Spanish Civil War, nursing George in Morocco after a severe bout of tubercular bleeding, narrowly escaping the destruction of their London apartment in World War II, and even adopting a baby boy when it became apparent that they were unable to have their own child. And their partnership produced some of the greatest works in English literature.
“Now,” George told a friend the night he met Eileen O’Shaughnessy, “that’s the kind of girl I would like to marry.” The year before, Eileen had published a futuristic poem called "End of the Century, 1984." Later, George would name his greatest work, 1984, in homage to the memory of Eileen.