Mrs. Orwell

Reviews Kristian Williams | August 6, 2026 Eileen O'Shaughnessy Blair was one of the first women to take a degree from Oxford, to which she had acquired a scholarship and where she studied under JRR Tolkien. After school she worked as a typist, and helped to organize her fellow workers to oppose a bullying boss before leaving to open her own firm. When a fascist coup led to civil war in Spain, she travelled to Barcelona where she worked in the offices of the Independent Labor Party. As the Communist Party gained control of the "Republican" side of the conflict, she found herself enmeshed in both political and personal intrigue, and ultimately had to sneak out of the country just a step ahead of the secret police. After returning to England, she moved for a while to the countryside, living and working on a farm. During the Second World War she took jobs in the censorship department, and then writing propaganda for the Ministry of Food. She died in 1945 at the age of thirty-nine, soon after adopting a small boy. She was also George Orwell's wife. Mrs. Orwell, a new graphic novel written by Andrea Chalupa with art by Brahm Revel, covers most of these events and a great deal more. It m...