Sonia Brownell This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. www.washingtonmonthly.com

   www.washingtonmonthly.com/feat - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/26/2003   Last Visited: 8/26/2003

   Now, in a biography devoted not to her famous husband, but to Sonia Brownell, writer Hilary Spurling, who came to know Sonia in the decade before the latter's death in 1980, attempts to rehabilitate Sonia Orwell's reputation.
   ...
   Now, in a biography devoted not to her famous husband, but to Sonia Brownell, writer Hilary Spurling, who came to know Sonia in the decade before the latter's death in 1980, attempts to rehabilitate Sonia Orwell's reputation.
   ...
   Like her famous husband, Sonia Brownell was born to a colonial family in India. It was a fractured, tragic childhood. Her father died when she was just four months old--rumored to have committed suicide--and her mother remarried, only to have that marriage unravel as her new husband spiraled downward into alcoholism. Also like Orwell, Sonia was sent away to boarding school in England, at Sacred Heart Convent in Roehampton--and suffered the same existence (deep loneliness, the contempt for the students without money) that Orwell would later describe in his 1947 essay "Such, Such Were the Joys."
   ...
   Brownell started her own literary career as a mostly unpaid business manager of Horizon, a literary and art review founded in 1940 by the brilliant Cyril Connolly (who'd known George Orwell at Eton) and his friend Peter Watson.
   ...
   There, Brownell developed into a surefooted editor with a fine eye for talent. It was also where she gained her reputation for being "difficult."She was unsparing and frequently imperious in her criticisms, but, as Spurling points out, "much of the trouble was that
   
   Brownell was trespassing on traditionally masculine critical and intellectual preserves."Both Connolly and Watson, who were frequently absent from the day-to-day running of the magazine, relied heavily on her judgment. In later life, as an editor for European publishing houses like Weidenfeld and Nicolson, her discerning eye secured such rising stars as Saul Bellow, Mary McCarthy, Norman Mailer, and Nigel Dennis.
   
   When Sonia Brownell met George Orwell in the early 1940s at a dinner party at Cyril Connolly's house, she was firmly ensconced as an editor at Horizon, and he was a star columnist for Tribune and a contributor to Horizon.
   ...
   Brownell, ever practical, offered to care for the child on the nanny's day off. It was perhaps inevitable that she and Orwell would soon discover how much they had in common, and plunge into an affair. Orwell asked Brownell to marry him.
   ...
   Sonia Brownell also became the inspiration for Julia (the girl from the Fiction Department), the tempestuous heroine of the novel.
   
   When Brownell met Orwell again in 1948, he had checked himself into a sanitarium and was dying. Sonia visited him through the spring and summer, writes Spurling, and when he again asked her to marry him, she accepted. "Her marrying Orwell had to do with her own deep unhappiness,"wrote Ian Angus, who along with Brownell edited Orwell's Collected Essays.
   ...
   They had both been battered by life: Orwell's loneliness and illness had worn him down, while Brownell had just ended an affair with philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom she described as the love of her life.
   ...
   Over the years, Brownell literally signed away her share of George Orwell Productions (she had fallen into the habit of signing papers put in front of her without reading them).

2. 2. "The Widow Orwell" by Kukula Glastris

   www.washingtonmonthly.com/feat - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/27/2003   Last Visited: 6/27/2003

   Now, in a biography devoted not to her famous husband, but to Sonia Brownell, writer Hilary Spurling, who came to know Sonia in the decade before the latter's death in 1980, attempts to rehabilitate Sonia Orwell's reputation.
   ...
   Now, in a biography devoted not to her famous husband, but to Sonia Brownell, writer Hilary Spurling, who came to know Sonia in the decade before the latter's death in 1980, attempts to rehabilitate Sonia Orwell's reputation.
   ...
   Like her famous husband, Sonia Brownell was born to a colonial family in India. It was a fractured, tragic childhood. Her father died when she was just four months old--rumored to have committed suicide--and her mother remarried, only to have that marriage unravel as her new husband spiraled downward into alcoholism. Also like Orwell, Sonia was sent away to boarding school in England, at Sacred Heart Convent in Roehampton--and suffered the same existence (deep loneliness, the contempt for the students without money) that Orwell would later describe in his 1947 essay "Such, Such Were the Joys."
   ...
   Brownell started her own literary career as a mostly unpaid business manager of Horizon, a literary and art review founded in 1940 by the brilliant Cyril Connolly (who'd known George Orwell at Eton) and his friend Peter Watson.
   ...
   There, Brownell developed into a surefooted editor with a fine eye for talent. It was also where she gained her reputation for being "difficult."She was unsparing and frequently imperious in her criticisms, but, as Spurling points out, "much of the trouble was that
   
   Brownell was trespassing on traditionally masculine critical and intellectual preserves."Both Connolly and Watson, who were frequently absent from the day-to-day running of the magazine, relied heavily on her judgment. In later life, as an editor for European publishing houses like Weidenfeld and Nicolson, her discerning eye secured such rising stars as Saul Bellow, Mary McCarthy, Norman Mailer, and Nigel Dennis.
   
   When Sonia Brownell met George Orwell in the early 1940s at a dinner party at Cyril Connolly's house, she was firmly ensconced as an editor at Horizon, and he was a star columnist for Tribune and a contributor to Horizon.
   ...
   Brownell, ever practical, offered to care for the child on the nanny's day off. It was perhaps inevitable that she and Orwell would soon discover how much they had in common, and plunge into an affair. Orwell asked Brownell to marry him.
   ...
   Sonia Brownell also became the inspiration for Julia (the girl from the Fiction Department), the tempestuous heroine of the novel.
   
   When Brownell met Orwell again in 1948, he had checked himself into a sanitarium and was dying. Sonia visited him through the spring and summer, writes Spurling, and when he again asked her to marry him, she accepted. "Her marrying Orwell had to do with her own deep unhappiness,"wrote Ian Angus, who along with Brownell edited Orwell's Collected Essays.
   ...
   They had both been battered by life: Orwell's loneliness and illness had worn him down, while Brownell had just ended an affair with philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom she described as the love of her life.
   ...
   Over the years, Brownell literally signed away her share of George Orwell Productions (she had fallen into the habit of signing papers put in front of her without reading them).