Jacintha Buddicom

Who was Jacintha Buddicom?

Jacintha Laura May Buddicom was a poet and a childhood friend of George Orwell.

Buddicom was born at Plymouth to Robert Arthur Buddicom, of that family of Ticklerton Court, Church Stretton, Shropshire, which property he inherited on his father's death in 1922, and his wife Laura Lucie. The family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where she first met Eric Blair in the summer of 1914 when he was standing on his head in a field at the bottom of the Buddicoms' garden. When asked why, he replied, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are the right way up."

From that summer afternoon, Eric and his younger sister Avril became very close friends with Buddicom and her younger brother and sister, Prosper and Guinever. With Prosper and Guiny, Blair enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching, while with Jacintha he preferred to read and write poetry and dream of future intellectual adventures. At this time he told Buddicom that at some point he might write a book in a style similar to that of H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia, although Nineteen Eighty-Four turned out to be far different from Buddicom’s expectations.