From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ – a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake’s ‘Tiger, Tiger’. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. seriously intended – writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. Nevertheless the volume of serious – i.e. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight.

Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books. This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate.įrom a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. If you value these resources, please consider becoming a Friend or Patron or making a donation to support our work. The Orwell Foundation is a registered charity. Home / Orwell / Essays and other works / Why I Write Why I Write

Essays by george orwell