The Girl from the Fiction Department

A Portrait of Sonia Orwell

Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book The Girl from the Fiction Department by Hilary Spurling, Penguin Books Ltd
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Author: Hilary Spurling ISBN: 9780241974612
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Publication: January 28, 2016
Imprint: Penguin Language: English
Author: Hilary Spurling
ISBN: 9780241974612
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication: January 28, 2016
Imprint: Penguin
Language: English

Absorbing and provocative, a biography of George Orwell's controversial second wife from the Whitbread Prize-winning author of Matisse the Master and Anthony Powell

Just three months before his death, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four took a new wife. Sonia Brownell was model for Julia in Orwell's most famous novel, she was fifteen years younger than her husband, and after his death she was hounded and pilloried as a manipulative gold-digger who would stop at nothing to keep control of the literary legacy. But the truth about Sonia was altogether different.

Beautiful, intelligent and fiercely idealistic, she lived at the heart of London's literary and artistic scene before her marriage to Orwell changed her life for ever. Those who knew her - Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus - witnessed her great personal generosity. And yet, burdened with the almost impossible task of protecting Orwell's intellectual estate, Sonia's loyalty to her late husband brought her nothing but poverty and despair.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Absorbing and provocative, a biography of George Orwell's controversial second wife from the Whitbread Prize-winning author of Matisse the Master and Anthony Powell

Just three months before his death, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four took a new wife. Sonia Brownell was model for Julia in Orwell's most famous novel, she was fifteen years younger than her husband, and after his death she was hounded and pilloried as a manipulative gold-digger who would stop at nothing to keep control of the literary legacy. But the truth about Sonia was altogether different.

Beautiful, intelligent and fiercely idealistic, she lived at the heart of London's literary and artistic scene before her marriage to Orwell changed her life for ever. Those who knew her - Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus - witnessed her great personal generosity. And yet, burdened with the almost impossible task of protecting Orwell's intellectual estate, Sonia's loyalty to her late husband brought her nothing but poverty and despair.

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