The Fight Over George Orwell's Copyrights
Sonia Brownell’s Legal Problems From 1977 to 1980
Sep 18, 2009
Brownell, who married Orwell shortly before his death in January 1950, had considerable experience as a secretary for Cyril Connolly and Peter Watson’s journal, Horizon. By the time of Orwell’s death, her presence in literary circles was a forgone conclusion.
Guarding Orwell’s Estate
Many who dealt with Brownell never forgave her for the difficulties they experienced in making Orwell public. Bernard Crick, for instance, who wrote the first authorized Orwell biography, was handpicked by Brownell after false starts with other writers. When she began to regret her decision – Crick, an economist, had never written a biography – she did everything within reach to stop its publication.
Jeffrey Meyers, whose superb biography of Orwell was released in 2000, is another example of her heavy-handed leadership. Meyers had obtained permission to use the Orwell Archive at University College, London, on a research grant in 1968. Though the library first approved, Sonia checkmated its decision. To view Orwell’s unpublished papers, one needed a seat in Brownell’s clique and to avert suspicion of writing an ‘unauthorized’ bio.
Her wishes were often unenforceable, but Brownell kept much of Orwell’s achievement under strict control. That is, until matters began to unravel in the late 1970s.
Brownell’s Lawsuit
In 1977, Brownell filed a lawsuit against Jack Harrison, the financial director for George Orwell Productions, a company founded upon the growing success of Nineteen Eighty-Four. While constantly involved in the publication and promotion of Orwell’s work, Brownell had no significant role in the estate’s finances. She had almost no bearing on monetary transactions and signed any documents passed to her at meetings.
Harrison claimed that he and Orwell made a deathbed agreement in which George Orwell Productions would own the copyrights of his work, Harrison taking one-fourth of the company. There were no witnesses to Harrison’s conversation with Orwell, nor were there documents with Orwell’s signature. Meanwhile, Brownell received a comparably small allowance from Orwell’s royalties and did not initially believe that Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm were turning such a large profit.
Harrison was probably swindling Brownell out of massive sums. In conversations during 1977, Brownell realized that she may have signed away her portion of the estate, including Orwell’s copyrights. Book reprints, use of unpublished correspondence, and film and television rights were now completely out of her hands.
Brownell’s Financial Ruin and Death
It has been assumed that Brownell, a heavy drinker who organized parties at her South Kensington home, was careless with money. But in truth, she wasn’t seeing much of Orwell’s royalties. By 1977, she was receiving an allowance of £750 per month from an estate soon to be valued at £100,000 per year and had to request any additional funds from Harrison. Orwell’s adoptive son Richard, who was under the care of his younger sister Avril, could also not receive benefits from the estate without Harrison's approval.
By the time of her lawsuit, Brownell was low on funds. Harrison earlier recommended that she sell her London house and move to Paris, where Brownell could receive tax breaks. She was cut off from her friends and lived in a damp basement apartment off the Luxembourg. Looking back, it may have been a way to get Sonia out of the managerial board’s hair.
Brownell’s attorneys were confident that her lawsuit could be won. But her health was declining and the trial was not due to begin until 1981. Worn out, out of money, and aged beyond her years, Brownell obtained a settlement without trial in which future copyrights would transfer to Richard Blair. She died of a brain tumor only weeks later, on December 11, 1980, at the age of 62.
It is frequently mentioned that Orwell has outperformed all of Secker & Warburg’s other backlist authors by two to one, a rundown that includes Franz Kafka, André Gide, Thomas Mann, and Yukio Mishima. By 1989, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm had alone sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
With a rough upbringing, a monumental literary task covering the last thirty years of her life, and a poverty-stricken end, Sonia Brownell can be viewed as Orwell’s tragic muse, whose faults only made her more human.
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