Mrs. Orwell will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 27 at 12pm ET. Details here and in the show notes. I would love to meet Gaslit Nation listeners! So if you can, come by and say hi. In the meantime, above is the April 13 book launch of Mrs. Orwell at PowerHouse Arena. Thank you to the listeners who came out–it was a joy to see you!
There would have been no George Orwell without Eileen O'Shaughnessy Blair. She saved her husband's life twice, including while they fought fascists on their honeymoon in the Spanish Civil War.
Eileen was more Orwell than Orwell. While Eric Blair served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, she studied literature under J.R.R. Tolkien and became one of Oxford's earliest women graduates. She trained in child psychology and shaped Animal Farm–a children's book. Her descendants credit her great influence on that now classic novel. Their friends even noticed that Eric's writing transformed after meeting Eileen.
Mrs. Orwell, illustrated by Brahm Revel and born from my film Mr. Jones, which features Orwell's Animal Farm, restores Eileen to her proper place of literary greatness. Her courage inspired me since I discovered her in Orwell's preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, which my mother's family carried from a World War II refugee camp to New York City.
Eileen's close friend Lettice Cooper said Eileen and Eric "live by a burning morality." Mrs. Orwell reminds us truth-telling takes a team.
Get your copy of Mrs. Orwell here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250877857/mrsorwell/
Meet Mrs. Orwell at the Brooklyn Book Festival: https://brooklynbookfestival.org/event/women-changing-history/
Calling all anti-fascist patriots and democracy defenders: send a strong message to the media and publishing industry by pre-ordering A Reasonable Guide for Unreasonable Women: 20 Steps to Find Your Purpose and Power in a World on Fire. It will help you build a dream project from scratch, aligned with creating a better world. It's Steve Bannon's worst nightmare, so grab your copy. Pre-order, forward your receipt to GaslitNation@gmail.com, and we'll send you a special gift and mail you a signed book plate.
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.