ABSTRACT
George Orwell's literary contemporaries and near-contemporaries have been influential oe the Anglo-American intellectual scene for years. Passionately engaged in the conflicts of his time, the intellectual hero writes for the age rather than the ages. Ultimately the intellectual hero represents not just an aspiration but an ideal; he or she is thus not merely one whom readers admire but whom they can idealize. The hero in history is by no means the hero throughout history. However strongly Richard Rees felt the pull of what T. E. Lawrence called "the historical ambition," George Orwell scorned the pursuit of reputation, posthumous or otherwise. On the one hand, he declared that "no decent person cares tuppence for the opinion of posterity." On the other hand, he acknowledged that "to be remembered after death" and "to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity" were among the chief motives for writing.
