George Orwell married Sonia Brownell in a hospital in October 1949 and died in January 1950; his estate's accountant ran his rights until she sued in 1979

George Orwell, 46, married Sonia Brownell, a literary editor about 15 years younger, on 13 October 1949 at University College Hospital, where he was being treated for tuberculosis. He made a will three days before he died on 21 January 1950, witnessed by Sonia and his first wife's sister, Gwen O'Shaughnessy. It left his literary estate to Sonia, and insurance was to provide for his adopted son, Richard. The estate was valued at about 10,000 pounds (Hilary Spurling's figure); another account says around 12,000 with no currency stated. According to Spurling, Orwell's rights went into a company, George Orwell Productions, run by his accountant, Jack Harrison, and Sonia signed away her share of it, often without reading the papers^†. By 1979 paperback sales of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four alone were worth over $100,000 a year, and she sued Harrison. Dying of a brain tumor, she settled, used the money to buy out the company and signed the copyrights to Richard. She died about two weeks later in 1980, "penniless" in Spurling's word.