A political writer, as well as a novelist, George Orwell has achieved great recognition throughout the literary world. Perhaps most famous for his novels, Animal Farm and 1984, Orwell also published other works, along with a number of political essays. In 1947, he explains in "Why I Write" the impulse that drove him as an author.

Orwell knew from an early age that he would be a writer someday. Growing up as a middle child, Orwell had little contact with his father. "For this and other reasons," he says, "I was somewhat lonely." He did however, "engage in literary activities," throughout this time, and wrote for school as well as recreational. Most of his writing, Orwell states, "reflected the styles of various writers [he] admired at different ages." At about the age of sixteen, he "discovered the joys of mere words," sparking his ambition to write "enormous naturalistic novels with...