A R Orage

22 January 1873 – 6 November 1934

A R Orage was a product of the British working class, largely self-educated, with formidable natural intelligence and an unquenchable yearning to understand. His literary skills and broad range of interests led him to edit the enormously influential journal The New Age from 1907 until 1922.

Orage first met P. D. Ouspensky in 1914. His ideas left a lasting impression and when he moved to London in 1921 Orage began attending his lectures. In 1922 he moved from London to Fontainebleau to join Gurdjieff. In January 1924, Orage went to New York to help Gurdjieff with his first visit to America and later introduced and supervised the Work there.

In 1927 Orage’s first wife, Jean, granted him a divorce and in September he married Jessie Richards Dwight (1901–1985), the co-owner of the Sunwise Turn bookshop where Orage first lectured on the Gurdjieff System. Orage and Jessie had two children, Richard and Ann. In May 1930, he returned to England and became deeply involved with political issues and was instrumental in rekindling interest in the socialist movement called ‘Social Credit’ which became a fringe force in politics for many decades.

He was planning to introduce Gurdjieff’s ideas in that paper and elsewhere when he died on the night of November 5, 1934. Orage taught The Work in a different manner to Ouspensky, emphasizing self-observation rather than self-remembering.

He is generally regarded as one of Gurdjieff’s leading pupils, both because of his efforts tp establish the Work in America and because of the literary assistance he gave Gurdjieff in writing All & Everything, particularly his work on The First Series.

[Details courtesy of Wikipedia]