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Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918 – 11 December 1980), better known as Sonia Orwell, was the second wife of writer George Orwell. Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Jun 15, 2003 · IN a life of brilliant passions, Sonia Brownell's 14-week marriage to George Orwell stands out as the lackluster chapter. To the altar the bride trailed a resplendent past.
Jul 6, 2003 · Orwell’s death in early 1950 devastated Sonia, a fact confirmed by other Orwell biographers (Shelden aside), though a rendezvous with Merleau-Ponty shortly after still excites nasty...
Mar 4, 2020 · George Orwell’s enigmatic first wife was, it appears, an exact inversion of his second wife. Eileen O’Shaugh-nessy married an unknown writer and then worked herself to death to ensure his fame, while Sonia Brownell married a dying writer in order to ensure her own fame.
Aug 16, 2023 · A previous version of this article misidentified the woman in the top photo as George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen. She is his second wife, Sonia. The photo of Sonia Orwell has been removed...
Jul 9, 2003 · On October 13, 1949, at University College Hospital in London where he was being treated for advanced tuberculosis, a 46-year-old George Orwell ex-changed wedding vows with Sonia Brownell, a...
Jan 8, 2018 · The Girl From The Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell by Hilary Spurling. Sonia Brownell became Sonia Orwell just two or three months before the author’s death and, until she herself died in 1980, was the executor and gatekeeper of the Orwell legacy.
Apr 25, 2002 · Spurling describes an accident that happened to Sonia Orwell when she was 17 and living with a family in Switzerland. She offers it as a defining, life-long trauma. A boat in which Sonia was sailing with three other young people overturned in a sudden squall.
Feb 18, 2020 · On 13th October 1949, Sonia Brownell and George Orwell were married in University College Hospital, where Orwell was being treated for tuberculosis. Orwell died three months later.
Orwell was well-read in French literature and had his own French cast of mind, and must have seen the volatile but intelligent Sonia as the almost perfect, even if sadly unobtainable, intellectual partner. All he lacked, he thought, was the power to attract the women who attracted him.
