Huxley, Aldous (Leonard) (1894-1963)

English writer of novels, essays, and verse. From the disillusionment and satirical eloquence of Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), and Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley developed towards the Utopianism (perfect political and social conditions) exemplified by Island (1962). His most popular work, the science fiction novel Brave New World (1932) shows human beings mass-produced in laboratories and rendered incapable of freedom by indoctrination and drugs.

Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, and educated at Oxford University. He was the grandson of the scientist and humanist Thomas Henry Huxley and brother of the biologist and writer of popular science books Julian Huxley. Aldous Huxley intended to become a doctor, but was hindered by problems with his sight, being blind for a time. Later his eyesight partly recovered and he graduated from Oxford with an English degree in 1915. Huxley joined the staff of the Athenaeum in 1919 and did miscellaneous literary work. He was in Italy 1923-30, writing novels, and he associated with English writer D H Lawrence there. In 1934 he visited Central America and in 1938 settled permanently in California. Huxley's later devotion to mysticism led to his experiments with the hallucinogenic drug mescalin, recorded in The Doors of Perception (1954). His other works include the philosophical novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936), After Many a Summer (1939; Tait Black Memorial Prize), the biography of French monk Père Joseph Grey Eminence (1941), and The Devils of Loudun (1952).

In addition to his novels, Huxley wrote a succession of books of essays which show a detached and consistent judgement; they include Proper Studies (1927), Brief Candles (1930), Music at Night (1931), Texts and Pretexts (1932), Ends and Means (1937), and Themes and Variations (1950). Later works are Time Must Have a Stop (1944) and Ape and Essence (1948). The Giaconda Smile (1948), is a play, originally a short story (1922); The Perennial Philosophy (1945) is a study of mysticism. He also published Literature and Science (1963) and his Selected Poems appeared in 1925.