Famous English Writer

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Famous English Writer

Aldous Huxley

The best representative of the more intellectual approach in the English novel is Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963). A. Huxley was grandson of the great natural historian, Thomas Huxley, he brought analytical scientific methods into fiction. In Antic Hay (1923) he depicts, in a humorous way, irresponsible people who try to have fun. In his masterpiece Point Counter Point (1928) he presents a picture of the crisis in bourgeois society. He excelled in recording the uncertainly and aimlessness of intellectuals after World War I. Influenced by Lawrence, wanted to achieve a harmonious balance between emotion and intellect, flash and reason, and in this novel he contrasts two different characters, Philip Quarles, an intellectual struggling hopelessly and tragically to acquire simple human happiness, and a well-balanced uncomplicated principles Mark Rampion, who lives a full and happy life. The plots in Huxley's novels only form the background and are not all-important. Growing up amidst purely intellectual family, Huxley understood that an exclusive concentration on intellectual activity tends to hinder genuine human happiness. In his Utopian fantastic novels Brave New World (1932) a Brave New World Revisited (1958), he creates a dreadful vision of a future world where children are produced by chemical ingredients. He criticised and satirises beliefs in a mechanical world. His last science-fiction novel Ape and Essence (1948), is protest against atomic war, a vision of twenty-second century when people return to primitive life after the world was destroyed by atomic bombs.

Geoge orwell

George Orwell (1903 - 1950) was important prosaist, journalist and essayist. His real name was Eric Blair but since 1930 he used the pseudonym Orwell (a name of an English river). He was born in India into a family of English civil servants. He was sent back to England to be educated at Eton, a prestigious a school for rich boys, so as a scholarship student, he felt the weight of his lower social status. After Eton he went to Burma, where he joined the Imperial Police. His discomfort in this service is captured in his famous essay Shooting the Elephant (1950) and his novel Burmese Days (1934). Orwell felt sympathy for people of lower economic classes. He struggled to survive at low-paying jobs, first in Paris later in London. These experiences are displayed in his next autobiographic novel Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). He sympathised with the socialists, and participated as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, on the side of Republicans. He dedicated his documentary book Homage to Catalonian (1938) to them. However, he was not a follower of any political party; he took an independent view and was sceptical of communismus as well as of capitalism. He continued to write novels, essays, and political journalist during the 1930s and 1940s.

His most famous books are the political allegories of Stalinism - Animal Farm (1945) and the anti-utopian Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949). Animal farm is a modern fable. Orwell satirises the events of the Russian revolution and the subsequent rise to power of the communist dictatorship. The farm represents the land that was a symbol of Soviet Union. Farmer Jones (the czar) frankly exploits the farm animals (the people), because he has always done so and he feels that he is right. When animals are driven to revolt, they are led by the intelligent pigs. The plot parallels historical events: the idealistic revolution, the establishment of secret police (the dogs), forced civilisation of the farm and the exploration of the workers, as represented by the horse Boxer. The leader-pig Napoleon has become more like the old farmer, even walking on his hind legs, while the enslaved animals live in despair. The revolutionary doctrine that "All animals are equal" has been corrupted to "Some animals are more equal than others".