English author George Orwell was married twice. His first wife was Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a poet and psychologist whom he married in 1936. They both became involved in the Spanish Civil War, with Orwell joining the militia of a Marxist political party supporting Spain’s Republican government against the conservative Nationalists. In 1937 the couple returned to England, having nearly lost their lives after the Republican side devolved into infighting between communists and moderate socialists.
In 1944 Orwell and his wife adopted a baby boy; several months later O’Shaughnessy died of heart failure during an operation. In October 1949, three months before his death from tuberculosis, Orwell married Sonia Brownell, an editorial assistant with the periodical Horizon.