Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life

Wifedom

'Truly wonderful... Anna Funder has written another brilliant human portrait.' - Claire Tomalin 
 
A BLAZING, GENRE-BENDING MASTERPIECE FROM ONE OF THE MOST INVENTIVE WRITERS OF OUR TIME 
 
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own . . . 
 
When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story? 
 
Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife. 
 
Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. 
 
'Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. And this in a narrative that grips the reader and unfolds through some of the most consequential moments - historical and cultural - of the twentieth century.' Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

A marvelous book . . . I just loved it all, and have a permanently marked-up, dog-eared copy on my shelf for the next generation.

Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full.

Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Truly wonderful... Anna Funder has written another brilliant human portrait.

Electrifying... Daring in both form and content, Funder's book is a nuanced, sophisticated literary achievement

A strikingly original study that casts Orwell in new light. Deeply perceptive, it is testament to forgotten wives of famous men everywhere.

Astonishing... Wifedom is no less than the rescue of a remarkable woman from the deliberate ellipses of default male history.

Caroline Criado-Perez, bestselling author of INVISIBLE WOMEN

Taylor's updated life will send readers back to Orwell's compelling visions of state power and surveillance with fresh appreciation. Still, it is Funder's evocation of Eileen's fugitive life that haunts this reader's imagination. It is a spellbinding achievement

An utter triumph, and nothing short of a miracle

Wonderful, unexpected and exciting from beginning to end

Astounding... A profoundly essential, significant and groundbreaking work... a work of love for both Eric and Eileen

An extraordinary blend of forensic historical detective work and evocative fiction, as well as snatches of memoir. It not only writes O'Shaughnessy back into the story but also questions how far we've really come in terms of gender equality. To read about O'Shaughnessy is to fall in love with her

Reminiscent of Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts or Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time . . . a riveting biography that not only rediscovers Eileen and paints a picture of a volatile period of history but also poses questions about what we value in art.

A tremendous book written with such brilliance, honesty, humour and wisdom. I loved the hybrid writing throughout and the way Funder weaves the personal and the political and the literary to bring Eileen to life, filling in the gaps that history, which is often his-story, has systematically forgotten.

A bravura analysis of female invisibility

A brilliant hybrid of biography, memoir and literary detective work, which demonstrates how patriarchy allows men to exploit women's unpaid services. Funder brings Eileen to life through her letters, supported by forensic re-reading of male-authored biographies and Orwell's classics about tyranny and truth.

A moving biography with the pacing of a novel.

Full of keen psychological insight and eloquent prose, WIFEDOM shines

Wifedom is both an immovable and an irresistible book, an object and a force . . . another great and important narrative of oppression and covert suppression.

Funder, author of Stasiland, her prizewinning account of the East German secret police, takes six letters written by Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, as the imaginative springboard for a deep dive into their relationship and her impact on his writing and legacy. A haunting, tragic and revealing book

It's hard to think of many other contemporary writers with such an acute eye for writing into the absences in the historical record.

Anna Funder’s brilliant meditation of the life of George Orwell’s wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy. . . [is] a furious, fascinating and all-too-current exposure of the inner life of the patriarchy.

George Orwell's first wife emerges vividly from Anna Funder's new book . . . welcome and necessary, returning life to a woman who was gifted, vivid, complex and highly intelligent, who gave up her own ambitions in the furtherance of her husband's

Funder is the perfect writer to integrate Orwell's legacy. She, too, has devoted her writing life to the subject of surviving tyranny.

'Anna Funder is a premier-league writer who can roll fiction, reportage, criticism and memoir into glinting prose, her sentences like handheld treasures you keep turning over, admiring for their graceful contours and crafted precision'

A genre-bending tour de force... After Funder, we will never look at this writer or his work in the same way again. Nor should we.

This study of George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen – whom his books never name – is fresh, original and immersive, thanks to the award-winning author of Stasiland.

Daily Telegraph 50 Best Books of the Year

Electrifying... a genre-melding hybrid that allows Eileen's likeness to be partially recovered through her own words and the testimonies of those who remembered her, as well as reimagined in fictional passages to flesh out the gaps in the record... Wifedom is a vital portrait of a woman whose unseen work was instrumental in the creation of books that became cornerstones of 20th century literature, the extent of her contribution impossible to measure, obscured as it is by the role of "wife"

In this rattlingly fierce book, Anna Funder sets out to unmask the "wicked magic trick" by which Eileen O'Shaughnessy Blair has been made to disappear... readers will be simply thrilled - and shaken - by this passionately partisan act of literary reparation

Anna Funder is the author of the international bestsellers Stasiland and All That I Am. In 2004 Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize and, along with All That I Am, has been published in twenty-six countries. All That I Am won the Miles Franklin Award, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. It was also chosen as a BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime. 
 
Anna was originally trained as an international human rights lawyer. She lives in Sydney.

Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own, and when she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story? 
 
Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife. 
 
Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past.

Anna Funder

A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales

The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane novel

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless, her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller, her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart...

All That I Am

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Anna Funder

Praise for All That I Am

A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales

The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane n ...

A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales

The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane n ...

A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales

The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane n ...

Books by Anna Funder

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter