After reviewing our publication schedule for upcoming titles, the publication date of Eileen: The Making of George Orwell is moving to March 2020.



The response to the book has been so strong that we have decided to give it a new publication date that will ensure the maximum support from the media and the trade. We are planning to send out the early copies to supporters, together with any rewards…

Richard Blair is the son Eileen and Orwell adopted in 1944

Why My Mother, Eileen, Matters 

Sylvia Topp’s minutely researched biography of my mother, Eileen Blair, has been long overdue. Here was a woman whose influence over one of the great writers of the twentieth century has been overlooked, for reasons that are difficult to understand. There is no question that she was instrumental…

Four Hardbacks as Gifts allows you to order four copies of Eileen: The Making of Orwell as Birthday or Christmas presents for four friends. All of them will receive the special edition of the book, and have their names printed in every copy. The reduced price for four books plus postage for U.S. customers is 94 pounds, which comes to about $132, or $33 per book.



This is another way to get Eileen…

When I was 18, I read Keep the Aspidistra Flying and immediately fell in love with George Orwell. His anti-hero, Gordon Comstock, a wild, intense, mad poet, was another representation of the “angry young man” type I found attractive, just the kind of exotic boyfriend I was hoping to find. And I really admired Rosemary, Gordon’s girlfriend, too. She was an independent woman, not afraid to argue with…

Three acclaimed George Orwell biographers have praised Eileen: The Making of Orwell.

Gordon Bowker, who wrote his biography, George Orwell, in 2003, says:

Sylvia Topp has written a most interesting biography of George Orwell's first wife, Eileen. Her researches have turned up some remarkable material from various semi obscure sources. And she has made especially good use of the testimonies…

The poem "You, You, You," shown in full text below, is written by Tom Kelly, a poet who lives in South Shields, the town where Eileen grew up.  



Tom writes, I did not know of Eileen Blair prior to researching her life and times for Gary Wilkinson’s film, ‘Wildflower.’ I began to walk in her footsteps, 

‘I see you as a bairn in South Shields, 

running into your father’s arms on King Street…

An Extract from Chapter 4: BETWEEN OXFORD AND ORWELL

Eileen’s high school in Sunderland celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, in 1934, with gatherings and dinners both on the school grounds and in London. In advance, looking ahead to the school’s one-hundredth anniversary, she wrote a poem which she titled “End of the Century, 1984,” and it was published in the Sunderland High School magazine…