Sonia Brownell and the Orwell Estate
George Orwell’s Second Wife From 1950 to 1977
Orwell’s second wife also shared duties as literary executor with friend Richard Rees.
Though Brownell was well-versed in publishing and served as editorial secretary at Horizon, it was a task that rapidly aged her.
Brownell’s Marriages
Shortly after their engagement in July 1949, Orwell was confined to University College Hospital in London for the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. Their October 1949 wedding took place around his bed with only David Astor and Robert and Janetta Kee in attendance. The marriage brought negative reaction amongst family and friends, but was generally accepted.
Motivated by her chaotic upbringing, Brownell was a fiery woman who encouraged artists with a strong cause. Few fit this description so completely as Orwell, whose commitment to journalistic integrity may be without equal in British literature. Orwell had little chance of recovery when he married Brownell, but it was said by friends that she hoped to guide Orwell back towards the living.
Brownell and a former boyfriend, painter Lucian Freud, arranged the transfer of Orwell to a Swiss sanatorium; but he died four days before their airplane flight, in the early morning of January 21st, 1950. Brownell did not visit that evening due to a cold and, stricken with guilt from childhood, took on the job of protecting his literary reputation.
Alone and overanxious, Sonia eventually married Michael Pitt-Rivers, a grandson of the Australian Governor General, in 1958. Pitt-Rivers, who was homosexual, served an 18-month jail sentence for his role in a scandal when homosexuality was banned. Sonia thought the marriage could improve his public image but it was short-lived and ended in divorce.
Brownell, who called herself Sonia Orwell rather than Sonia Blair (Eric Arthur Blair was Orwell’s legal name), had later affairs but never married again, devoting herself to down-on-their-luck friends such as Ivy Compton-Burnett and Jean Rhys.
Managing the Orwell Estate
For thirty years, Brownell was the driving force behind Orwell’s literary presence, at least in figurative terms. She felt obligated to protect Orwell’s esteem for all it was worth, guarding his copyrights and printings with an iron fist. This created as many enemies as friends and only widened her divide of public opinion.
Brownell, who was 15 years Orwell’s junior, has been viewed as an opportunist looking to ‘cash in’ on the author’s impending death. On the other hand, Orwell’s royalties at the time were nothing compared to posthumous sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four, when the novel was released as a paperback. Animal Farm and his earlier novels also enjoyed a later boost in sales while film, television, and stage producers were hoping to release adaptations.
Mrs. Orwell was a tough gatekeeper. She intervened in Orwell adaptations and broadcasts if she viewed them as inaccurate and often denied scholars permission to quote from Orwell’s work. Sonia also burned all of her letters from Orwell and denied publishers the right to use correspondence not yet seen in print.
Access to the Orwell Archive at University College, London, which Brownell helped to found in 1960, was limited to a select few. Brownell was thought of as a difficult person, especially at a time when women held subordinate roles in the working world.
Brownell's Problems
To say that Brownell wasn’t perfect is an understatement. Besides the rough time she gave certain figures, Brownell wasted a great deal of time and money in entertaining friends at her South Kensington home. The stress of managing Orwell's canon was also an overwhelming burden that made her drink heavily and become increasingly neurotic.
Brownell managed with Ian Angus to release a collection of Orwell’s essays and correspondence in 1968, but her assertion that the 2,040-page, four-volume set was ‘complete’ is nowhere accurate. Peter Davison’s recent Complete Works of George Orwell, which took 17 years to compile,offers 8,500 pages in twenty volumes.
In 1977, Brownell filed a lawsuit against Jack Harrison, who managed finances for George Orwell Productions, the company founded upon growing success of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nearing bankruptcy, Sonia may have been cheated out of her position as a shareholder. This case, according to biographer Hilary Spurling, overshadowed her last years.
Orwell's Collected Works, released in 1968
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