Senior Writer Paul Gray was an impressionable high school student when he first encountered Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's masterwork. "I was frightened by it," Gray recalls. "I think anyone who reads it carries the experience with him for the rest of his life." For this week's cover story, Gray went back to Nineteen Eighty-Four, the other eight major works and the hundreds of essays in the Orwell canon, to write an appreciation of the late British author.

The adjective Orwellian, like Kafkaesque, has come to symbolize some of the horrors of the 20th century, but most of the author's works present a less gloomy vision than does Nineteen Eighty-Four. "His essential appeal is similar to Dickens'," says Gray, who senses an underlying optimism in Orwell's political and autobiographical essays. "When Orwell exposes the cruelties of society, he's writing from the heart and passionately demanding justice."

Orwell was one of the English language's most precise prose craftsmen, and assessing such a literary icon would give any writer pause. Gray, who taught English literature for seven years at Princeton, is no exception. Says he: "I sometimes felt as though his ghost were looking over my shoulder, judging every word that came out of my typewriter."

London Correspondents Mary Cronin and John Saar, who interviewed some of Orwell's friends and colleagues, are also ardent admirers of this week's cover subject. Says Saar: "For clarity, honesty and the willingness to tell the difficult truths, he was a model journalist."

Senior Editor Stefan Kanfer also finds Orwell a compelling figure. "Orwell created a persona for himself," says Kanfer. "He was a complete individualist and something of an adventurer." Reading Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London in 1954 inspired Kanfer to travel around Europe--"I was down but I wasn't quite out"--and eventually to pursue a career in journalism.

In tracking down information about Orwell's life, Reporter-Researcher Anne Hopkins was startled to discover that although much of Orwell's fame stems from Nineteen Eighty-Four, the author's manuscript showed that he had also considered setting his story in 1980 or 1982. Says Hopkins: "The title has borne such phenomenal significance that it's ironic now to learn that it might have been completely arbitrary." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.