River Orwell pre-Celtic; but "-well" probably indicates an Anglo-Saxon naming. In "A tour through England and Wales" written in 1722, Daniel Defoe calls the river "Orwel" (though does this inconsistently). He also mentions that "a traveller will hardly understand me, especially a seaman, when I speak of the River Stour and the River Orwell at Harwich, for they know them by no other names than those of Maningtre-Water, and Ipswich-Water". The writer Eric Blair chose the pen name under which he would later become famous, "George Orwell", because of his love for the river. A few miles north of the Orwell is
George Orwell writing works so long and sophisticated they have had an influence on literary criticism. He wrote in the conclusion to his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens, George Woodcock suggested that the last two sentences also describe Orwell. Orwell wrote a critique of George Bernard Shaw's play "Arms and the Man". He considered this Shaw's best play and the most likely to remain socially relevant, because of its theme that war is not, generally speaking, a glorious romantic adventure. His 1945 essay "In Defense of P.G. Wodehouse" contains an amusing assessment of Wodehouse's writing and also argues that his broadcasts from