Eileen Maud Blair (née O'Shaughnessy, 25 September 1905 – 29 March 1945) was a British poet and psychologist. She was the first wife of Eric Arthur Blair, commonly known as the English author George Orwell. During the Spanish Civil War in 1937, she volunteered as an English-French typist for the Independent Labour Party leader John McNair while Orwell was fighting with the POUM. When the POUM was declared illegal, she helped her husband escape from Spain.
Blair supported Orwell as a typist, collaborator and critic of his works. She was left in charge of his manuscript for his novel The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937, when Orwell left to fight in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, she worked for the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in London and the Minister of Food.
After living with a condition of the uterus for years, Blair booked an operation for a hysterectomy and died during surgery at the age of 39, while Orwell was working away on an assignment in Europe. Biographers have credited her with being influential on Orwell's work, including his 1945 novella Animal Farm. Her poem titled "End of the Century, 1984", which was published in 1934, the year before she met Orwell, foreshadowed his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Early life and education
Blair was born Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy on 25 September 1905 in South Shields. She was the daughter of Laurence O'Shaughnessy, an inspector of customs and excise, and Mary Westgate. She spent her early years in the family home at Westgate House, Beach Road. During her childhood she attended Westoe School. Her brother Laurence Frederick O'Shaughnessy, was born on 24 December 1900. He attended South Shields High School for Boys, then pursued a career as a thoracic surgeon.
Blair attended Sunderland Church High School. In October 1924, she entered St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied English literature and language, comprising gothic and German philology, Old English philology, Middle English philology and the history of the English language. During her three years at Oxford, her tutors included J. R. R. Tolkien and Mary Ethel Seaton. In 1927, she received a higher second-class degree. She was extremely disappointed to not achieve a first class degree. At the time, female students were a small minority, as the university had allowed women to graduate only four years earlier.
In the autumn of 1934, Blair enrolled at University College London for a two-year postgraduate course in educational psychology, leading to a Master of Arts. She was particularly interested in testing intelligence in children and chose it as the subject for the thesis.
Blair wrote a poem titled "End of the Century, 1984" to mark her school's fiftieth anniversary, which was published in the Sunderland High School magazine in 1934. It expressed her concerns about the contemporary emphasis on science, technology and reason making the poetry and art of the past obsolete. The poem is optimistic, looking fifty years into the future to the year 1984 with the expectation of a revival.
They married the next year, on 9 June 1936, at St Mary's Church, Wallington, Hertfordshire. Their first home was a cottage at Number 2, Kit's Lane, Wallington, known as "The Stores", where they lived until 1940. It was in a much poorer condition than the home in which she was raised. The cottage was small, damp, remote and lacked modern facilities. It also served as the village store, so Blair settled into married life by cooking and selling groceries while her husband was busy writing. In a letter from November 1936, she wrote that she argued continuously with Orwell in the first few weeks of marriage, which was partially the result of Orwell's aunt Nellie Limouzin staying for two months in the spare bedroom. Blair wrote that her husband's family had warned her prior to marriage that he was "impossible to live with" but she noted that they failed to understand that she had a similar temperament.
Letters written by Orwell suggest that the Blairs had an open marriage. Orwell pursued Blair's friend, Lydia Jackson, and also a friend named Inez Holden, two romantic interests that he concealed from his wife. Blair also displayed interest in Georges Kopp, Orwell's commander in the Spanish Civil War.
Spanish Civil War
thumb|right|300px|The Blairs with members of the [[ILP Contingent|ILP unit on the Aragon Front outside Huesca on 13 March 1937]]
Blair followed Orwell to Spain in mid-February 1937. She travelled alone through France and crossed the border to Spain. Blair volunteered for a post in the office of John McNair, the leader of the Independent Labour Party who coordinated the arrival of British volunteers, and brought her husband English tea, chocolate and cigars. The small unit of volunteers in the ILP was attached to the very large Workers' Party of Marxist Unification or POUM. Orwell was posted to the front, while Blair worked in Barcelona as an English-French shorthand typist.
After several weeks at the front, Orwell was hospitalised for ten days with a poisoned hand. He returned to the front and near the end of April returned to Blair in Barcelona on leave. He had arrived in the time of the street battles that occurred during the May Days. After the street fighting stopped, he returned to the front.
The internal fighting between Republican forces resulted in an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia in Barcelona. The ILP office was one of several suspect groups under surveillance with reports drawn up by the International Brigades’ branch of the military intelligence service, led by members of the Comintern. Both Orwell and Blair were being watched. While Orwell was away at the front, several volunteer friends were imprisoned.
On 20 May, a bullet hit Orwell in the neck and Blair had him transferred to a hospital in Barcelona.
Return to England and Second World War
thumb|right|[[Senate House, London, where Blair worked at the Ministry of Information, was the model for the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four.]]
After returning to their home in Wallington, Orwell suddenly began bleeding from the mouth in March 1938 and Blair received advice from her brother. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and removed to a sanatorium in Kent for the summer. Blair travelled for five hours to visit him in the sanatorium every fortnight. On the advice of her brother, they spent the winter of 1938 in Marrakech, French Morocco, but both disliked the experience and Blair had a high fever. Orwell rented a house three miles from town, where he wrote the novel Coming Up for Air. The Blairs had moved back to London for the convenience of their work, initially living in a flat at Dorset Chambers in Chagford Street, followed by Langford Court in Langford Place off Abbey Road. They then moved to 10 Mortimer Crescent, in Kilburn.
In May 1940, her brother, Laurence, was killed by a bomb during the evacuation from Dunkirk, During this time, she was commonly known as "Emily Blair". Later in the 1980s, her friend Lettice Cooper commented, "I find it difficult now to remember her as Eileen". Blair and Richard went to live in Greystone House near Stockton-on-Tees with her sister-in-law Gwen O'Shaughnessy.
Death
Blair had been living with uterine bleeding for many years. In December 1940, she wrote that she had been confined to the bed for four weeks but the doctors failed to identify the exact cause of her illness. Sylvia Topp suggests that she may have been suffering from endometriosis. In early March 1945, she experienced pain and extensive vaginal bleeding and her friends had to get help. On 28 March 28, 1945, she entered the Fernwood House nursing home in Newcastle upon Tyne alone. She wrote one final letter to Orwell just before the operation, describing her room and the morphia injection, and it was left on her bedside table. Orwell expressed the loss of his wife as "a terribly cruel and stupid thing to happen". In the following two years after Blair's death, he proposed marriage to several women, which he attributed to the feeling of being "desperately alone sometimes".
Influence on Orwell's writing
Topp writes that Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was foreshadowed by her poem, "End of the Century, 1984". She noted that the novel begins on 4 April, the day after Orwell buried his wife.
Blair collaborated with Orwell indirectly on Animal Farm. Orwell originally planned to write an essay, but she suggested a fable. They worked on it together in the evenings and their friends said they could see her style and humour in the novel. Orwell wrote of his wife, "It's a terrible shame that Eileen didn't live to see the publication of Animal Farm, which she was particularly fond of and even helped in the planning of."