Author of acclaimed biography Wifedom hits back at critics who say book casts Orwell in an unfairly negative light
George Orwell was in his mid-40s, enjoying the peak of his fame after the publication of Animal Farm. Yet his mood was low after the death of his wife, Eileen. He was in Wales with his friend Arthur Koestler, where they were joined by 27-year-old Celia Kirwan. She and Orwell spent the night together, with Kirwan commenting afterwards that the author made love “Burma-sergeant fashion”, clearly in a hurry and simply saying: “Ah, that’s better” before turning over.
This story is included in a recent book, Wifedom, about the marriage of Orwell and his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy. However, the author is now at the centre of a row about the veracity of some of the claims that she makes, including this one.
This story of Orwell and Kirwan’s sexual encounter is one of the passages that Viking, part of Penguin Random House, has agreed to correct, as well as another that tells of a trip where the pair met on the Scottish island of Jura. One more is the location of Orwell’s country of birth, which is cited as Burma, not India.
Funder has imposed a modern feminist view on a marriage of 80 years ago. She has also attacked Orwell, for whatever reasons Quentin Kopp, Orwell Society
Wifedom is written by Anna Funder, winner of the top nonfiction prize, the Samuel Johnson, now known as the Baillie Gifford, for Stasiland. When Wifedom was published late this summer, it garnered widespread praise, including a review in the Observer in which writer Stephanie Merritt described it as a “vital, if incomplete, portrait of a woman whose unseen work was instrumental in the creation of books that became cornerstones of 20th-century literature”.
The Times in its review acknowledges that while “not everyone will feel easy about the passages in which Funder allows herself to imagine what is going on inside Eileen’s head”, most readers will be “simply thrilled – and shaken – by this passionately partisan act of literary reparation”.
