In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, multi award-winning author Anna Funder chats with Gabriella about her choices while crafting Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life. Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slipped into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watched him create his writing self, she tried to remember her own…
Winner off the prestigious French prize: Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger
Notable Book of 2023: New York Times
Book of the Year: The Times, The Economist, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph (UK) and The Telegraph (UK)
Wifedom
Wifedom resurrects Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a brilliant Oxford graduate who married George Orwell in 1936. As well as oppressing, suppressing and subjugating Eileen, Orwell omitted her from his published works and private notebooks. His six male biographers also unconsciously or consciously wrote her out of Orwell’s life story.
Meet Eileen O’Shaughnessy
Eileen O’Shaughnessy
Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd
When Anna Funder uncovered Orwell’s forgotten wife, it was 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 Norah, Anna Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolled up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she was led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.
So, she will live writing the letters she did – six to her best friend, and three to her husband. I know where she was when she wrote them. I know that the dishes were frozen in the sink, that she was bleeding, that he was in bed with another woman – and she knew it . . . I supply only what a film director would, directing an actor on set – the wiping of spectacles, the ash on the carpet, a cat pouring itself off her lap.
In Wifedom, Anna restored Eileen’s visibility and voice. 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 twentieth century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Wifedom is so well respected it’s been published in 20 countries and translated into 16 languages.
The Orwells’ adopted son, Richard, with Eileen in 1944.
Photograph: © Sonia Brownell Orwell
Blending Biography, Memoir and Literary Criticism
Wifedom reflects Anna Funder’s deep commitment to restoring Eileen’s voice and visibility. By incorporating her letters and crafting a narrative that blends memoir, biography, and literary criticism, Anna portrayed Eileen sensitively and in a multidimensional way. Through Wifedom, she not only challenged the traditional biographical form, but also highlighted the systemic biases that have historically silenced women’s contributions, especially those of a wife. Wifedom stands as a testament to the importance of re-examining history through a more inclusive lens, ensuring that voices like Eileen’s are heard and remembered.
Women Being Written Out of History
Praise for Wifedom
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
There’s exhilaration in reading every brilliant word.
Chloe Hooper
One of the most startling explorations of life-writing (Eileen’s, Orwell’s and Funder’s) in recent times . . . Wifedom is a genre-bending tour-de-force that resurrects an invisible woman, and relitigates the saintly image of the man she called ‘Eric’ . . . a moving, forensic act of biographical reconstruction.
Robert McCrum, The Independent
A virtuoso performance on the theme, adding personal memoir, some fictional reconstructions and a glittering sense of purpose.
Sarah Bakewell, New York Times
Interviews with Anna Funder about Wifedom
Grattan’s Summer Series: Anna Funder on Wifedom - Podcast
YouTube · Grattan Institute, 8 Jan 2024
Author Anna Funder delves into the untold story behind ...
YouTube · ABC News In-depth, 20 July 2023
target="_blank"YouTube · The Leaf Bookshop, 26 July 2023
YouTube · Keen On, 26 Aug 2023
Talking Ideas: Interview with Anna Funder
Anna Funder is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and awarded writers. Her books STASILAND and ALL THAT I AM are prize-winning international bestsellers, translated into many languages. WIFEDOM has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’.
Anna’s signature works tell true stories of courage, resistance, conscience and love, illuminating the human condition in times of tyranny and surveillance. She ‘explores the space between the conscience and the soul’ (Scotland on Sunday) and ‘uncovers everyday heroes buried by history’ (The Observer). In her worlds ‘wit survives and inhumanity is often undermined by its ironies’ (The Times).
Anna was born in Melbourne and spent her early childhood in San Francisco and Paris, as her father completed his post-doctoral work in medicine, and her mother plotted a career in psychology while looking after three small children.
Anna studied English literature, German and law in Melbourne and West Berlin. In the 1990’s she was Counsel in International and Human Rights law for the Australian Government before leaving to live in Berlin and write full-time. She has continued her commitment to human rights as an Ambassador for the International Cities of Refuge Network which offers safe havens around the world to writers persecuted in their own countries.
Anna’s books have received many prestigious awards, including the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Prize for best non-fiction published in the English language for Stasiland, and Australia’s premier prize for fiction, the Miles Franklin, for All That I Am. Her essays have been widely published and anthologised.
Anna is a University of Technology Sydney Luminary and Ambassador. In 201,1 she was named in the ‘Top 100 People of Influence’ by the Sydney Morning Herald and appointed to the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
After several years in Brooklyn, NY, Anna now lives in Sydney.
To Learn More About Anna Funder You’ll Find Her Here: