Talk:Eileen O'Shaughnessy

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"It is believed by scholars that Eileen had a large influence on Orwell's writing." (E.g. Animal Farm, 1984) -- Can anybody provide any cites for this assertion?

I found some with Google, but that can be gossip... btw I'd love to read the poem, can someone copy it to here? Alensha 17:33, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I hope this helps. It's an excerpt from Eileen's entry in my Alan Myers Literary Guide to North East England.

'Eileen appears as Rosemary Waterlow in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Curiously enough Orwell mentions the unemployed of Middlesbrough three times in the first chapter, though he had never been to the town. Perhaps he had read Aldous Huxley (q.v.) on the topic. During World War II, Eileen worked with the novelist Lettice Cooper at the Ministry of Food, preparing recipes and scripts for ‘The Kitchen Front’, a regular morning broadcast. The character of Ann in Lettice Cooper’s 1947 novel Black Bethlehem is clearly based on Eileen. Bernard Crick in his biography of Orwell, remarks that many features of the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four owed as much to her experiences in the Ministry of Food as to Orwell’s at the BBC. In this connection it is intriguing to note that a few years ago, the Sunderland Echo published three poems written by Eileen in 1934 for the fiftieth anniversary of Sunderland High School. These, ’Death’, ’Birth’ and ’Phoenix’ are collectively entitled END OF THE CENTURY 1984. Some of the lines even hint at ideas included in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is quite possible that Orwell was aware of Eileen’s poems, though the pair did not meet until the following year. Scholars have hitherto considered that 1984 was simply the publication year, 1948, reversed (though that was not the book’s original title) but Eileen’s work has fuelled fresh academic controversy.'

After Eileen's death in Newcastle, Orwell attended the funeral in St Andrew's cemetery (and paid for the headstone as 'Eric Blair'). Curiously enough, while there he was standing a stone's throw from Sanderson Road, Jesmond (plaque), where Yevgeni Zamyatin had lived in 1916-17. Zamyatin's WE owes something to his time in England, and of course is considered a strong influence on Orwell's 1984. Emmet 23. 52 28.5.05

Notes: "paid for the headstone as 'Eric Blair'". Well, his name was Eric Blair -- he never legally changed it to George Orwell. And here are a couple of links to Yevgeni Zamyatin and his novel We. -- Writtenonsand 04:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)