Aldous Huxley
An English Intellectual
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The grandson of biologist T. H. Huxley, Aldous Huxley had a privileged background and was educated at Eton and Oxford despite an eye infection that left him nearly blind. Having learned braille his eyesight then improved enough for him to start writing, and by the 1920s he had become a fashionable figure, producing witty and daring novels like CROME YELLOW (1921), ANTIC HAY (1923) and POINT COUNTER POINT (1928). But it is as the author of his celebrated portrayal of a nightmare future society, BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), that Huxley is remembered today. A truly visionary book, it was a watershed in Huxley's world-view as his later work became more and more optimistic - coinciding with his move to California and experimentation with mysticism and psychedelic drugs later in life. Nicholas Murray's brilliant new book has the greatest virtue of literary biographies: it makes you want to go out and read its subject's work all over again. A fascinating reassessment of one of the most interesting writers of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A mordant satirist and impresario of uncomfortable ideas, Aldous Huxley (1894 1963) remains best known for Brave New World, an early 1930s look into a grim future. Murray, biographer of (among others) Huxley's great-uncle Matthew Arnold, evokes the writer rather than the writings. Restless in body as well as in mind, Huxley never lived in one place very long, and could not make do with one woman, although his uncomplaining wife, Maria, was totally devoted all her life. Huxley was never easy to live with. His fastidious distaste for people not on his level of high culture was unconcealed. He experimented with extreme diets, psychedelic drugs and an undogmatic mysticism. An eye infection early on cost him much of his sight; still, he read omnivorously, often with a large magnifying glass, and was read to by Maria. Murray is best on the bleakly visionary Huxley who exploited his creative gifts as a quirky public intellectual. Although this biography does not replace Sybille Bedford's more thorough two-volume life, the passage of time has enabled Murray to deal with issues too sensitive for earlier publication, and to access diaries and other documents not available earlier. Readers may find Huxley sufficiently provocative here to look up his caustic Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Point Counter Point and the biographer's choice After Many a Summer. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
