Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on George Orwell's 1984. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
1984: Context
1984: Plot Summary
1984: Detailed Summary & Analysis
1984: Themes
1984: Quotes
1984: Characters
1984: Symbols
1984: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of George Orwell

Historical Context of 1984
Other Books Related to 1984
- Full Title: Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel
- When Written: 1945-49; outline written 1943
- Where Written: Jura, Scotland
- When Published: June 1949
- Literary Period: Late Modernism
- Genre: Novel / Satire / Parable
- Setting: London in the year 1984
- Climax: Winston is tortured in Room 101
- Antagonist: O'Brien
- Point of View: Third-person omniscient
Extra Credit for 1984
Outspoken Anti-Communist. Orwell didn't just write literature that condemned the Communist state of the USSR. He did everything he could, from writing editorials to compiling lists of men he knew were Soviet spies, to combat the willful blindness of many intellectuals in the West to USSR atrocities.
Working Title. Orwell's working title for the novel was The Last Man in Europe.