On this day...

English author Eric Blair, better known by pseudonym George Orwell, died in 1950, at the age of 46. Born in India, where his father work in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service, he moved to England with his mother when he was one year old. There, inspired by his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, he began to write poetry, telling her that he would write a book similiar in style to that of H.G.Wells' 'A Modern Utopia'. Orwell obtained a scholarship to Eton and thrived on his studies there, yet without the sufficient funds for university, he was forced to choose a new career path; the Indian Imperial Police. After a posting in Burma, Orwell decided to become a full time writer and returned home. So started of period of his life during which he explored both England and abroad, using his experiences of poverty to influence his works, much like one of his literary heroes, Jack London. Serving as part of the Home Guard during World War Two, Orwell's works became of an increasingly political and socialist nature. The latter perhaps epitomised by his description of Dickens as, 'a nineteenth-century liberal...a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls'. Orwell's best known works include 'Animal Farm' and the influential 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.

On this day...

Jack London, American novelist, was born in 1876. Born to a astrologist father, whose story could easily fill its own novel, and a mother who believed she could channel the spirit of an Indian chief, London's early life and adolescence was plagued with inconsistency, and indeed he landed in jail for a month on account of vagrancy. The next few years contained many experiences which would find their way into his later writings. Living as, alternatly, a hobo, sailor and goldminer, London contracted scurvy and was left with several disfigurements as well as a socialist sympathy. Thought to be one of the first American authors to have a profitable career solely from writing payments, London's real breakthrough into the literary market came with 'The Call of the Wild', for which the publishers paid him three cents per word. A century on, the adventure thriller, along with fellow adventure novel 'The Sea Wolf', remained highly popular novels, both inspiring numerous adaptations on both sides of the Atalntic. London endured several accusations of plagiarism during his lifetime, many of which appeared legitimate complaints. He died prematurely in 1916 at the age of 40.