English novelist and critic, grandson of the prominent biologist T.H. Huxley (see further below) and brother of Julian Huxley, who also was a biologist. Aldous Huxley's production was wide. Besides novels he published travel books, histories, poems, plays, and essays on philosophy, arts, sociology, relogion and morals. Among Huxley's best known novels is BRAVE NEW WORLD, which is one of the classical works of science along with George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four. The novel was an pessimistic answer to H.G. Wells' scientific optimisms. The drug "soma" mentioned in the story comes from Thomas More's Utopia.

Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey into a well-to-do upper-middle-class family. On his mother's side he was related to Matthew Arnold, the great British humanist, and his father was a biographer, editor, and poet. He studied at Eton College, Berkshire (1908-13), Balliol College, Oxford (1913-15), receiving his B.A. in English in 1916. He worked for the War Office in London in 1917, taught briefly at Eton College and Repton while embarking on a career as a writer, chiefly as a poet. By 1920 Huxley had published three collections of poetry. In 1919-20 he was member of the editorial staff of Athenaeum in London . Between the years 1920-21 Huxley was drama critic for Westminster Gazette, assistant at the Chelsea Book Club and worked for Condé Nast Publications (1922). In 1921 appeared Huxley's first novel, CROME YELLOW, which started his career as one of the most fashionable literary figures of the decade. In eight years he published a dozen books, among them POINT COUNTER POINT (1928), a harrowing account of the death of the protagonist's child and various thwarted love-affairs. In his most complex work, whose numerous characters are compared to instuments in an orchestra, each character plays his separate portion of Huxley's vision of life.

During the 1920s Huxley formed a close friendship with D.H. Lawrence with whom he traveled in Italy and France. From 1923 to 1930 Huxley lived in Italy and in France from 1931 to 1936.

In 1937 Huxley moved to the United States with the guru-figure Gerald Heard. After this turning point in his life, Huxley abandoned pure fictional writing and chose the essay as the definitive and preferred vehicle for expressing his ideas. He settled in California, where he wrote screenplays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood for film studios, which did not gain success. His own work for Hollywood included a screenplay for MGM's Pride and Prejudice (1940). Huxley was also a regular contributor to Vedanta and the West, the magazine Isherwood edited while a discipline of Swami Prabhavananda.

In 1954 Huxley publsihed an influental study of consciousness expansion through mescalin, THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (see Jim Morrison) and became later a guru among Californian hippies'. He also started to use LSD and showed interest in Hindu philosophy.

In 1961 Huxley suffered a severe loss when his house and his papers were distroyed in a bush-fire. Huxley died in Los Angeles on November 22, 1963. In the media news of his death were overshadoved by the assassination of President Kennedy.

Huxley was married twice. In 1919 he married Maria Nys, who died 1956. They had one son. In 1956 he married the violinist and psychoterapist Laura Archera.

As a essayist Huxley was concerned about the power of science and technology. His pessimism caused much controversy among his readers. Huxley's disillusionment led him finally to seek answers from mysticism. Among Huxley's most puzzling ideas was the education of the human being as 'amphibian', one capable of living in different enviroments.

Huxley's later works include THE DEVILS OF LOUDON (1952), depicting mass-hysteria and exorcism in the 17th-century France, ISLAND (1962), an utopian novel and an optimistic return to the territory of Brave New World, sequel BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED (1959), in which Huxley compares the predictions of his classic work with subsequent developments in science and society, and posthumous esseyistic piece LITERATURE AND SCIENCE (1963).

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

English biologist, who wrote on biology as a specialist and as a popularizer. His published also books on education, philosophy and theology. Huxley's investigations in comparative anatomy, paleontology, and evolution exerted a great influence on the 19th century biology. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1851 and at the age of 26 he was recognized as one of the leading scientist in England. Among his publications is Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863). T.H. Huxley's grandson Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975) became also famous biologist. The writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was his brother. - SEE ALSO: Charles Darwin, whom Huxley met in 1851 and maintained a close relationship thereafter. Huxley was Darwin's first supporters.

For further reading: Aldous Huxley by Harold H. Watts (1969); Aldous Huxley by John Atkins (1967); Aldous Huxley and the Way to Reality by Charles M. Holmes (1970); Aldous Huxley: Satirist and Novelist by Peter Firchow (1972); Aldous Huxley by Sybille Bedford (1973-74, 2 vols.); Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage by Donald Watts (1975) Brave New World (1932) - A black comedy and nightmarish vision of a future society.

In the year 632 after Ford (i.e., the 26th century) the world has attained a kind of scientifically balanced communist utopia. Universal happines is preserved by psychotropic drugs. John the Savage, raised in a reservation of American Indian primitives, abandoned by his mother in a primitive outpost, comes into this world. John is thinking, feeling individual, who has read Shakespeare and wittnessed primitive religious rituals. When his mother dies of an overdose of the feel-good drug, John swells a violent revolt. He engages in a dialogue with the World Controller Mustapha Mond and debates the merits of freedom and passion. He is harassed as a freak of the accepted social order. In the end the Savage yields to the temptations of the carefree world, and kills himself in disgust.

Selected works:

• THE BURNING WHEEL, 1916
• THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, 1918
• LIMBO, 1920
• CROME YELLOW, 1921
• ANTIC HAY, 1923
• ON THE MARGIN, 1923
• ALONG THE ROAD, 1925
• THOSE BARREN LEAVES, 1925
• JESTING PILATE, 1926
• ESSAYS NEW AND OLD, 1926
• PROPER STUDIES, 1927
• POINT COUNTER POINT, 1928
• DO WHAT YOU WILL, 1929
• HOLY FACE, AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1929
• BRIEF CANDLES, 1930
• THE WORLD OF LIGHT, 1931
• MUSIC AT NIGHT, 1931
• THE LETTERS OF D.H. LAWRENCE, 1932 (ed.)
• BRAVE NEW WORLD, 1932
• BEYOND THE MEXIQUE BAY, 1934
• EYELESS IN GAZA, 1936
• THE OLIVE TREE, AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1936
• STORIES, ESSAYS, AND POEMS, 1937
• ENDS AND MEANS, 1937
• AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PACIFISM, 1937 (ed.)
• AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN, 1938
• TIME MUST HAVE A STOP, 1944
• THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, 1946 (ed.)
• APE AND ESSENCE, 1948
• THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, 1948
• GIOCONDA SMILE, 1948
• COLLECTED WORKS, 1948 - (in progress)
• THEMES AND VARIATIONS, 1950
• THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN, 1952
• THE DOORS OF PERCEPRION, 1954
• ADONIS AND THE ALPHABET, 1956
• COLLECTED SHORT STORIES, 1957
• THE WORLD OF ALDOUS HUXLEY, 1957
• BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED, 1958
• COLLECTED ESSAYS, 1959
• ON ART AND ARTIST, 1960
• SELECTED ESSAYS. 1961
• LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1963
• LETTERS OF ALDOUS HUXLEY, 1969
• THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ALDOUS HUXLEY, 1970
• HUXLEY AND GOD, 1992
• HEARST ESSAYS, 1994
• BETWEEN THE WARS, 1994
• THE HIDDEN HUXLEY, 1994

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).