For the first time, these two essential books on George Orwell have been brought together under one cover. The Unknown Orwell describes the first thirty years of Orwell's life--his childhood, the years at Eton and in Burma, the struggles to become a writer--that Orwell himself deliberately obscured. Orwell: The Transformation carries us forward into the crucial years 1933 to 1937 in which Eric Blair, minor novelist, became George Orwell, a powerful writer with a view, a mission, and a message--a transformation largely triggered by his deep engagement with the Spanish civil war.