Sonia Orwell

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. Sonia worked with the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, which helped to increase the international fame of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. With her support, the IRD was able to translate Animal Farm into over 16 languages, and for British embassies to disseminate the book in over 14 countries for propaganda purposes. Soon after her husband's death, Sonia sold the film rights to Animal Farm to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This deal resulted in the creation of the propaganda film Animal Farm (1954), which became the first feature length animated film made in Britain. Early life Brownell was born in Calcutta, British India, the daughter of a British colonial official. Her father died when she was four years old. When she was six, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Convent in Roehampton (now part of Roehampton University), in England. She left at 17 and, after learning French in Switzerland, took a secretarial course. As a young woman, Brownell was responsible for transcribing and editing the copy text for the first edition of the Winchester Le Morte d'Arthur, as assistant to the eminent medievalist at Manchester University, Eugène Vinaver. Orwell Brownell first met Orwell when she worked as the assistant to Cyril Connolly, a friend of his from Eton College, at the literary magazine Horizon. After the death of his first wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, Orwell became desperately lonely. On 13 October 1949, he married Brownell, only three months before his death from tuberculosis.