Aldous Huxley
Writer
Date Of Birth:
26 July 1894
Date Of Death:
22 November 1963
cancer
Place Of Birth:
Surrey, England
Aldous Huxley was an English writer whose most famous work is the 1932 novelBrave New World. Born into a family of distinguished intellectuals on both sides of the family, he graduated from Oxford in 1916 and went to work as a writer. He published poems and worked odd jobs in the early 1920s, until his first novels,Crome Yellow(1921) andAntic Hay(1923), earned him a reputation among the London literati as a gifted and witty cynic.Brave New Worldwarned that a future utopia based on technology and social control would be a nightmare, a theme that resonated with readers in Europe and the U.S. During the 1930s Huxley bolstered his reputation as an essayist, and his intellectual pursuits turned increasingly to Eastern mysticism. He moved to the United States in 1937 and settled in southern California, where he worked as a screenwriter (including the 1940 adaptation ofJane Austin'sPride and Prejudice) and studied eastern religions with Gerald Heard and Swami Prabhavananda. He also experimented with hallucinogens, specifically mescaline and LSD. His writings about his experiences,The Doors of Perception(1954) andHeaven and Hell(1956), helped make him a counterculture hero in the 1960s. On his deathbed from cancer, he reportedly had his wife inject him with LSD during his final moments. His other novels includeEyeless in Gaza(1936),Time Must Have a Stop(1944) andIsland(1962).
Extra Credit
Huxley’s famous ancestors included, on his mother’s side, poet Matthew Arnold, and, on his father’s side, Thomas Henry Huxley, famous champion ofCharles Darwin… An eye ailment left Huxley blind for part of his college career, and he was plagued by poor eyesight off and on his entire life… He died on the same day asJohn F. KennedyandC.S. Lewis.
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