Editing George Orwell (section)

===London and Paris===
[[File:George_Orwell's_Home,_Notting_Hill,_London.jpg|thumb|The blue house on the right was Blair's 1927 lodgings in [[Portobello Road]], London.]]
In England, he settled back in the family home at [[Southwold]], renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an [[Old Etonian]] dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 122</ref> In 1927 he moved to London.<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 195</ref> [[Ruth Pitter]], a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in [[Portobello Road]];<ref>Ruth Pitter ''BBC Overseas Service broadcast'', 3 January 1956</ref> a [[blue plaque]] commemorates his residence there.<ref>{{openplaque|2825}}</ref> Pitter's involvement in the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs. Blair's eyes". Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and ventured into the [[East End of London]]—the first of the occasional sorties he would make intermittently over a period of five years to discover the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it.<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 204</ref>

In imitation of [[Jack London]], whose writing he admired (particularly ''[[The People of the Abyss]]''), Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to [[Limehouse Causeway]], spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's "kip". For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like a [[tramp]], adopting the name P.S. Burton; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in "[[The Spike (essay)|The Spike]]", his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book, ''[[Down and Out in Paris and London]]'' (1933).<ref>{{cite news |title=Orwell's take on destitution, live from Paris and London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/28/george-orwell-down-out-london-paris-live-performance|access-date=16 November 2021 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>
[[File:Rue du Pot-de-Fer.JPG|left|thumb|upright|Rue du Pot de Fer on the [[Rive Gauche (Paris)|Left Bank]] in the [[5th arrondissement of Paris|5th arrondissement]], where Blair lived in Paris]]

In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the [[5th arrondissement of Paris|5th arrondissement]].<ref name=Taylor/> His aunt [[Ellen Kate Limouzin|Ellen (Nellie) Kate Limouzin]] also lived in Paris (with the [[Esperanto|Esperantist]] [[Eugène Lanti]]) and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version of ''Burmese Days'', but nothing else survives from that period.<ref name=Taylor/> He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in ''[[Monde (review)|Monde]]'', a political/literary journal edited by [[Henri Barbusse]] (his first article as a professional writer, "La Censure en Angleterre", appeared in that journal on 6 October 1928); ''[[G. K.'s Weekly]]'', where his first article to appear in England, "A Farthing Newspaper", was printed on 29 December 1928;<ref>''A Kind of Compulsion'' (1903–36), p. 113</ref> and ''Le Progrès Civique'' (founded by the left-wing coalition [[Cartel des Gauches|Le Cartel des Gauches]]). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks in ''Le Progrès Civique'': discussing unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject—at the heart of almost everything he wrote until ''[[Homage to Catalonia]]''."<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 216</ref>

He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to the [[Hôpital Cochin]], a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay "[[How the Poor Die]]", published in 1946 (though he chose not to identify the hospital). Shortly afterwards, he had all his money stolen from his lodging house. Whether through necessity or to collect material, he undertook menial jobs such as dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on the [[rue de Rivoli]], which he later described in ''Down and Out in Paris and London''. In August 1929, he sent a copy of "[[The Spike (essay)|The Spike]]" to [[John Middleton Murry]]'s ''[[Adelphi (magazine)|New Adelphi]]'' magazine in London. The magazine was edited by [[Max Plowman]] and [[Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet|Sir Richard Rees]], and Plowman accepted the work for publication.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Marks |first1=Peter |title=George Orwell the Essayist: Literature, Politics and the Periodical Culture |date=2015 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |page=28}}</ref>