Eileen O'Shaughnessy
| Eileen Blair | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Eileen Maud O'Shaugnessy 25 September 1905 South Shields |
| Died | 29 March 1945 (aged 39) |
| Resting place | St Andrew's and Jesmond Cemetery, West Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne |
| Nationality | English |
| Other names | Eileen O'Shauhgnessy |
| Known for | Wife of George Orwell |
Eileen Maud Blair (née O'Shaughnessy, 25 September 1905 – 29 March 1945) was the first wife of George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair).
She was born in South Shields in the northeast of England. Her mother was Marie O'Shaughnessy and her father was Lawrence O'Shaughnessy, a customs collector.
O'Shaugnessy attended Sunderland Church High School. In the autumn of 1924, she entered St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied English. In 1927 she received a higher second-class degree. By choice there followed a succession of jobs 'of no special consequence and with no connection from one to the next', which she held briefly, and which began with work as an assistant mistress at Silchester House, a girls' boarding school in Taplow in the Thames valley, and included being a secretary; a reader for the elderly Dame Elizabeth Cadbury; and the proprietor of an office in Victoria Street, London, for typing and secretarial work. When she closed it down she took up freelance journalism, selling an occasional feature piece to the Evening News. She also helped her brother Lawrence, by typing, proofreading and editing his scientific papers and books.
In the autumn of 1934 Eileen enrolled at University College, London for a two-year graduate course in educational psychology, leading to a Master of Arts qualification. Eileen was particularly interested in testing intelligence in children "and quite early decided upon that as the subject for the thesis she would be writing".Elizaveta Fen, a fellow student who became one of O'Shaughnessy's closest friends, met her then for the first time: "She was twenty-eight years old and looked several years younger. She was tall and slender, her shoulders rather broad and high. She had blue eyes and dark brown, naturally wavy hair. George once said that she had 'a cat's face' – and one could see that this was true in a most attractive sense..."
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