George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic. He is best known for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which are widely regarded as two of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. Orwell's writing is characterized by its lucid prose, social criticism, and opposition to totalitarianism. He was a democratic socialist and supported democratic socialism. Orwell was born in 1903 in Motihari, India, and died in 1950 in London.