Animal Farm ─ A Fairy Story

The animals on Mr. Jones's farm stage a successful revolution, and take the place over. Their hopes, their plans, and their achievements form the subject of Animal Farm. In the first flush of enthusiasm there is set up a great commandment, All animals are equal, but unfortunately leadership devolves almost automatically on the pigs, who are on a higher intellectual level than the rest. The revolution begins to go wrong - yet at every step excellent excuses are always forthcoming for each perversion of the original doctrine.

George Orwell?(pseudonym for Eric Blair [1903-50]) was born in Bengal and educated at Eton; after service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living penning novels and essays. He was essentially a political writer who focused his attention on his own times, a man of intense feelings and intense hates. An opponent of totalitarianism, he served in the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Besides his classic Animal Farm, his works include a novel based on his experiences as a colonial policeman, Burmese Days, two firsthand studies of poverty, Down and Out in Paris?and London and The Road to Wigan Pier, an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia; and the extraordinary novel of political prophecy whose title became part of our language, 1984.