Biography:Aldous Huxley

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Short description: English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)
Aldous Huxley
Monochrome portrait of Aldous Huxley sitting on a table, facing slightly downwards.
Huxley in 1954
Born
Aldous Leonard Huxley

(1894-07-26)26 July 1894
Godalming, Surrey, England
Died22 November 1963(1963-11-22) (aged 69)
Los Angeles County, California, United States
Occupation
  • Writer
  • philosopher
Spouse(s)
  • Maria Nys
    (m. 1919; died 1955)
  • Laura Archera (m. 1956)
ChildrenMatthew
Relatives
Academic background
EducationBalliol College, Oxford
Influences
Academic work
Discipline20th-century philosophy
Sub-disciplineWestern philosophy
  • British philosophy
  • American philosophy
School or traditionPerennialism
Main interests
Notable works
Signature
Aldous Huxley signature.svg

Aldous Leonard Huxley (/ˈɔːldəs/ AWL-dəs; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher.[1][2][3][4] His bibliography spans nearly 50 books,[5][6] including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.[7] By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time.[8] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times,[9] and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.[10]

Huxley was a pacifist.[11] He grew interested in philosophical mysticism,[11][12][13] as well as universalism,[14][15] addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

Early life

English Heritage blue plaque at 16 Bracknell Gardens, Hampstead, London, commemorating Aldous, his brother Julian, and his father Leonard

Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894.[16] He was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine,[17] and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one of her sister's novels.[18] Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist who had often been called "Darwin's Bulldog". His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevenen Huxley (1889–1914), who took his own life after a period of clinical depression.[19]

As a child, Huxley's nickname was "Ogie", short for "Ogre".[20] He was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently contemplated "the strangeness of things".[20] According to his cousin and contemporary Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing.[20]

Huxley's education began in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming.[21][22] He was taught there by his own mother for several years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside he went on to Eton College. His mother died in 1908, when he was 14 (his father later remarried). He contracted the eye disease Keratitis punctata in 1911; this "left [him] practically blind for two to three years"[23] and "ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor".[24] In October 1913, Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature.[25] He volunteered for the British Army in January 1916, for the Great War; however, he was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye.[25] His eyesight later partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA with first class honours.[25] His brother Julian wrote:

I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career ... His uniqueness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province.[26]

Following his years at Balliol, Huxley, being financially indebted to his father, decided to find employment. He taught French for a year at Eton College, where Eric Blair (who was to take the pen name George Orwell) and Steven Runciman were among his pupils. He was mainly remembered as being an incompetent schoolmaster unable to keep order in class. Nevertheless, Blair and others spoke highly of his excellent command of language.[27]

Huxley also worked for a time during the 1920s at Brunner and Mond, an advanced chemical plant in Billingham in County Durham, northeast England. According to an introduction to his science fiction novel Brave New World (1932), the experience he had there of "an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence" was an important source for the novel.[28]

Career

Painting of Huxley (at age 32) by John Collier (1927)

Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early twenties, establishing himself as a successful writer and social satirist. His first published novels were social satires, Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World (1932) was his fifth novel and first dystopian work. In the 1920s, he was also a contributor to Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines.[29]

Contact with the Bloomsbury Set

Bloomsbury Group members (July 1915). Left to right: Lady Ottoline Morrell (age 42); Maria Nys (age 15), who would become Mrs Huxley; Lytton Strachey (age 35); Duncan Grant (age 30); and Vanessa Bell (age 36)

During the First World War, Huxley spent much of his time at Garsington Manor near Oxford, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, working as a farm labourer. While at the Manor, he met several Bloomsbury Group figures, including Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead,[30] and Clive Bell. Later, in Crome Yellow (1921), he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were very scarce, but in 1919, John Middleton Murry was reorganising the Athenaeum and invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted immediately, and quickly married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys (1899–1955), also at Garsington.[31] They lived with their young son in Italy part of the time during the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend D. H. Lawrence. Following Lawrence's death in 1930 (he and Maria were present at his death in Provence), Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1932).[32] Very early in 1929, in London, Huxley met Gerald Heard, a writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science.[33]

Works of this period included novels about the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, (his magnum opus Brave New World), and on pacifist themes (Eyeless in Gaza).[34] In Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, Huxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production and Pavlovian conditioning.[35] Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, on whom he based a character in Eyeless in Gaza.[36]

thumb|Aldous Huxley by Low (1933)

During this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means (1937), An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy, and was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union.[37]

Life in the United States

In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood with his wife Maria, son Matthew Huxley, and friend Gerald Heard. Cyril Connolly wrote, of the two intellectuals (Huxley and Heard) in the late 1930s, "all European avenues had been exhausted in the search for a way forward – politics, art, science – pitching them both toward the US in 1937."[38] Huxley lived in the U.S., mainly southern California ,[39][40][41] until his death, and for a time in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote Ends and Means (1937). The book contains tracts on war,[42] inequality,[43] religion[44] and ethics.[45]

Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta (Upanishad-centered philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa. In 1938, Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange (sometimes edging on debate) over many years, with Krishnamurti representing the more rarefied, detached, ivory-tower perspective and Huxley, with his pragmatic concerns, the more socially and historically informed position. Huxley wrote a foreword to Krishnamurti's quintessential statement, The First and Last Freedom (1954).[46]

Huxley became a Vedantist in the group formed around Hindu Swami Prabhavananda, and subsequently introduced Christopher Isherwood to the circle. Not long afterwards, Huxley wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas, The Perennial Philosophy, which discussed the teachings of renowned mystics of the world.[47][48]

Huxley became a close friend of Remsen Bird, president of Occidental College. He spent much time at the college in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The college appears as "Tarzana College" in his satirical novel After Many a Summer (1939). The novel won Huxley a British literary award, the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.[49] Huxley also incorporated Bird into the novel.[50]

During this period, Huxley earned a substantial income as a Hollywood screenwriter; Christopher Isherwood, in his autobiography My Guru and His Disciple, states that Huxley earned more than $3,000 per week (approximately $50,000[51] in 2020 dollars) as a screenwriter, and that he used much of it to transport Jewish and left-wing writer and artist refugees from Hitler's Germany to the US.[52] In March 1938, Huxley's friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which hired him for Madame Curie which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor. (Eventually, the film was completed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and cast.) Huxley received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). He was commissioned by Walt Disney in 1945 to write a script based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the biography of the story's author, Lewis Carroll. The script was not used, however.[53]

Huxley wrote an introduction to the posthumous publication of J. D. Unwin's 1940 book Hopousia or The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society.[54]

On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter, he predicted:

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narcohypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."[55]

In 1953, Huxley and Maria applied for United States citizenship and presented themselves for examination. When Huxley refused to bear arms for the U.S. and would not state that his objections were based on religious ideals, the only excuse allowed under the McCarran Act, the judge had to adjourn the proceedings.[56][57] He withdrew his application. Nevertheless, he remained in the U.S. In 1959, Huxley turned down an offer to be made a Knight Bachelor by the Macmillan government without giving a reason; his brother Julian had been knighted in 1958, while his brother Andrew would be knighted in 1974.[58]

In the fall semester of 1960 Huxley was invited by Professor Huston Smith to be the Carnegie Visiting professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[59] As part of the MIT centennial program of events organised by the Department of Humanities, Huxley presented a series of lectures titled, "What a Piece of Work is a Man" which concerned history, language, and art.[60]

Robert S. de Ropp (scientist, humanitarian, and author), who had spent time with Huxley in England in the 1930s, connected with him again in the U.S. in the early 1960s and wrote that "the enormous intellect, the beautifully modulated voice, the gentle objectivity, all were unchanged. He was one of the most highly civilized human beings I had ever met."[61]

Late-in-life perspectives

Biographer Harold H. Watts wrote that Huxley's writings in the "final and extended period of his life" are "the work of a man who is meditating on the central problems of many modern men".[62] Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for itself. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised interview conducted by journalist Mike Wallace, Huxley outlined several major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency towards distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to persuasion; the tendency to promote modern politicians to a naive public as well-marketed commodities.[63] In a December 1962 letter to brother Julian, summarizing a paper he had presented in Santa Barbara, he wrote, "What I said was that if we didn't pretty quickly start thinking of human problems in ecological terms rather than in terms of power politics we should very soon be in a bad way."[64]

Huxley's engagement with Eastern wisdom traditions was entirely compatible with a strong appreciation of modern science. Biographer Milton Birnbaum wrote that Huxley "ended by embracing both science and Eastern religion".[65] In his last book, Literature and Science, Huxley wrote that "The ethical and philosophical implications of modern science are more Buddhist than Christian...."[66] In "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction," published one month before he died, Huxley endorsed training in general semantics and "the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness," writing that "We must learn how to be mentally silent, we must cultivate the art of pure receptivity.... [T]he individual must learn to decondition himself, must be able to cut holes in the fence of verbalized symbols that hems him in."[67]

Association with Vedanta

Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other followers, he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.[15]

In 1944, Huxley wrote the introduction to the Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God,[68] translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

From 1941 until 1960, Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John Van Druten from 1951 through 1962.

Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples. Two of those lectures have been released on CD: Knowledge and Understanding and Who Are We? from 1955. Nonetheless, Huxley's agnosticism, together with his speculative propensity, made it difficult for him to fully embrace any form of institutionalised religion.[69]

Psychedelic drug use and mystical experiences

In early 1953, Huxley had his first experience with the psychedelic drug mescaline. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Doctor Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist then employed in a Canadian institution, and eventually asked him to supply a dose of mescaline; Osmond obliged and supervised Huxley's session in southern California. After the publication of The Doors of Perception, in which he recounted this experience, Huxley and Swami Prabhavananda disagreed about the meaning and importance of the psychedelic drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions. Huxley later had an experience on mescaline that he considered more profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception.

Huxley wrote that "The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life."[70]

Having tried LSD in the 1950s, he became an advisor to Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert in their early-1960s research work with psychedelic drugs at Harvard. Personality differences led Huxley to distance himself from Leary, when Huxley grew concerned that Leary had become too keen on promoting the drugs rather indiscriminately, even playing the rebel with a fondness for publicity.[71][72]

Eyesight

Huxley (age 52) in 1947, his right eye affected by keratitis, which he had contracted in 1911

Differing accounts exist about the details of the quality of Huxley's eyesight at specific points in his life. Circa 1939, Huxley encountered the Bates method, in which he was instructed by Margaret Darst Corbett. In 1940, Huxley relocated from Hollywood to a 40-acre (16 ha) ranchito in the high desert hamlet of Llano, California, in northern Los Angeles County. Huxley then said that his sight improved dramatically with the Bates method and the extreme and pure natural lighting of the southwestern American desert. He reported that, for the first time in more than 25 years, he was able to read without glasses and without strain. He even tried driving a car along the dirt road beside the ranch. He wrote a book about his experiences with the Bates method, The Art of Seeing, which was published in 1942 (U.S.), 1943 (UK). The book contained some generally disputed theories, and its publication created a growing degree of popular controversy about Huxley's eyesight.[73]

It was, and is, widely believed that Huxley was nearly blind since the illness in his teens, despite the partial recovery that had enabled him to study at Oxford. For example, some ten years after publication of The Art of Seeing, in 1952, Bennett Cerf was present when Huxley spoke at a Hollywood banquet, wearing no glasses and apparently reading his paper from the lectern without difficulty:

"Then suddenly he faltered—and the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn't reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonising moment."[74]

Brazilian author João Ubaldo Ribeiro, who as a young journalist spent several evenings in the Huxleys' company in the late 1950s, wrote that Huxley had said to him, with a wry smile: "I can hardly see at all. And I don't give a damn, really."[75]

On the other hand, Huxley's second wife Laura later emphasised in her biographical account, This Timeless Moment: "One of the great achievements of his life: that of having regained his sight." After revealing a letter she wrote to the Los Angeles Times disclaiming the label of Huxley as a "poor fellow who can hardly see" by Walter C. Alvarez, she tempered her statement:

"Although I feel it was an injustice to treat Aldous as though he were blind, it is true there were many indications of his impaired vision. For instance, although Aldous did not wear glasses, he would quite often use a magnifying lens."[76]

Laura Huxley proceeded to elaborate a few nuances of inconsistency peculiar to Huxley's vision. Her account, in this respect, agrees with the following sample of Huxley's own words from The Art of Seeing:

"The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable."[77]

Nevertheless, the topic of Huxley's eyesight has continued to endure similar, significant controversy.[78] American popular science author Steven Johnson, in his book Mind Wide Open, quotes Huxley about his difficulties with visual encoding:

"I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon ..."[79][80]

Personal life

Huxley married on 10 July 1919[81] Maria Nys (10 September 1899 – 12 February 1955), a Belgian epidemiologist from Bellem,[81] a village near Aalter, he met at Garsington, Oxfordshire, in 1919. They had one child, Matthew Huxley (19 April 1920 – 10 February 2005), who had a career as an author, anthropologist, and prominent epidemiologist.[82] In 1955, Maria Huxley died of cancer.[24]

In 1956, Huxley married Laura Archera (1911–2007), also an author, as well as a violinist and psychotherapist.[24] She wrote This Timeless Moment, a biography of Huxley. She told the story of their marriage through Mary Ann Braubach's 2010 documentary, Huxley on Huxley.[83]

Huxley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 1960; in the years that followed, with his health deteriorating, he wrote the utopian novel Island,[84] and gave lectures on "Human Potentialities" both at the UCSF Medical Center and at the Esalen Institute. These lectures were fundamental to the beginning of the Human Potential Movement.[85]

Huxley was a close friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Rosalind Rajagopal, and was involved in the creation of the Happy Valley School, now Besant Hill School, of Happy Valley, in Ojai, California.

The most substantial collection of Huxley's few remaining papers, following the destruction of most in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, is at the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles.[86] Some are also at the Stanford University Libraries.[87]

On 9 April 1962 Huxley was informed he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, the senior literary organisation in Britain, and he accepted the title via letter on 28 April 1962.[88] The correspondence between Huxley and the society is kept at the Cambridge University Library.[88] The society invited Huxley to appear at a banquet and give a lecture at Somerset House, London, in June 1963. Huxley wrote a draft of the speech he intended to give at the society; however, his deteriorating health meant he was not able to attend.[88]

Death

On his deathbed, unable to speak owing to advanced laryngeal cancer, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular." According to her account of his death[89] in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69, at 5:20 p.m. PST on 22 November 1963.[90]

Media coverage of Huxley's death, along with that of fellow British author C. S. Lewis, was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the same day, less than seven hours before Huxley's death.[91] In a 2009 article for New York magazine titled "The Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club", Christopher Bonanos wrote:

The championship trophy for badly timed death, though, goes to a pair of British writers. Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, died the same day as C. S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia series. Unfortunately for both of their legacies, that day was November 22, 1963, just as John Kennedy's motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Huxley, at least, made it interesting: At his request, his wife shot him up with LSD a couple of hours before the end, and he tripped his way out of this world.[92]

This coincidence served as the basis for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley, which imagines a conversation among the three men taking place in Purgatory following their deaths.[93]

Huxley's memorial service took place in London in December 1963; it was led by his elder brother Julian. On 27 October 1971,[94] his ashes were interred in the family grave at the Watts Cemetery, home of the Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton, Guildford, Surrey, England.[95]

Huxley had been a long-time friend of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who dedicated his last orchestral composition to Huxley. What became Variations: Aldous Huxley in memoriam was begun in July 1963, completed in October 1964, and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 17 April 1965.[96][97]

Awards

  • 1939: James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for After Many a Summer Dies the Swan).
  • 1959: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit (for Brave New World).
  • 1962: Companion of Literature (Royal Society of Literature)[98]

Commemoration

In 2021, Huxley was one of six British writers commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by Royal Mail to celebrate British science fiction.[99] One classic science fiction novel from each author was depicted, with Brave New World chosen to represent Huxley.[99]

Bibliography

Adaptations

  • A Woman's Vengeance (1948), film directed by Zoltan Korda, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • Prelude to Fame (1950), film directed by Fergus McDonell, based on novelette "Young Archimedes"
  • The World of Light (1950), TV movie, based on play The World of Light: A Comedy in Three Acts
  • Das Lächeln der Gioconda (1953), TV movie directed by Werner Völger, based on play Mortal Coils: Play
  • Das Lächeln der Gioconda (1958), TV movie directed by Michael Kehlmann, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • Das Genie und die Göttin (1959), TV movie directed by Walter Rilla, based on play The Genius and the Goddess
  • The Gioconda Smile (1963), TV movie directed by Patrick Barton, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • Das Lächeln der Gioconda (1966), TV movie directed by Ilo von Jankó, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • Mona Lisan hymy (1966), TV movie directed by Jukka Sipilä, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • After Many a Summer (1967), TV movie directed by Douglas Camfield, based on novel After Many a Summer
  • Point Counter Point (1968), miniseries directed by Rex Tucker, based on novel Point Counter Point
  • Úsmev Mony Lízy (1968), TV movie directed by Bedřich Kramosil, based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile"
  • Die Teufel von Loudun (1969), TV movie directed by Rolf Liebermann, based on novel The Devils of Loudun
  • Il sorriso della Gioconda (1969), TV movie directed by Enrico Colosimo, based on play Mortal Coils: Play
  • Eyeless in Gaza (1971), miniseries directed by James Cellan Jones, based on novel Eyeless in Gaza
  • The Devils (1971), film directed by Ken Russell, based on novel The Devils of Loudun
  • Effetti speciali (1978), TV movie directed by Gianni Amelio, based on a novel
  • Il piccolo Archimede (1979), TV movie directed by Gianni Amelio, based on novelette "Young Archimedes"
  • Brave New World (1980), TV movie directed by Burt Brinckerhoff, based on novel Brave New World
  • The Holy Family (1994), short film directed by Ulrich Weis, based on short story "The Claxtons"
  • Brave New World (1998), TV movie directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, based on novel Brave New World
  • Stardust (2002), short film directed by Roque Azcuaga, based on a novel
  • Brave New World (2010), miniseries directed by Leonard Menchiari, based on novel Brave New World
  • Brave New World (2014), fan film directed by Nathan Hyde, based on novel Brave New World
  • The Alien (2017), short film directed by William le Bras and Gabriel Richard, based on poem "The Alien"
  • Brave New World (2020), series created by David Wiener, based on novel Brave New World
  • Die Teufel von Loudun (2022), film directed by Christoph Engel, based on novel The Devils of Loudun

See also

  • List of peace activists

References

  1. ↑ Watt, Donald, ed (1975). Aldous Huxley. Routledge. p. 366. ISBN 978-0-415-15915-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=8PHKq723vpUC&pg=PA366. "Inge's agreement with Huxley on several essential points indicates the respect Huxley's position commanded from some important philosophers ... And now we have a book by Aldous Huxley, duly labelled The Perennial Philosophy. ... He is now quite definitely a mystical philosopher." 
  2. ↑ Sion, Ronald T. (2010). Aldous Huxley and the Search for Meaning: A Study of the Eleven Novels. McFarland & Company, Inc.. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-7864-4746-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=77ithOrxlgMC&pg=PA2. "Aldous Huxley, as a writer of fiction in the 20th century, willingly assumes the role of a modern philosopher-king or literary prophet by examining the essence of what it means to be human in the modern age. ... Huxley was a prolific genius who was always searching throughout his life for an understanding of self and one's place within the universe." 
  3. ↑ Reiff, Raychel Haugrud (2010). Aldous Huxley: Brave New World. Marshall Cavendish Corporation. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7614-4278-3. "He was also a philosopher, mystic, social prophet, political thinker, and world traveler who had a detailed knowledge of music, medicine, science, technology, history, literature and Eastern religions." 
  4. ↑ Sawyer, Dana (2002). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Crossroad Publishing Company. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-8245-1987-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=_uIdAQAAIAAJ&q=aldous+huxley+philosopher. Retrieved 10 April 2016. "Huxley was a philosopher but his viewpoint was not determined by the intellect alone. He believed the rational mind could only speculate about truth and never find it directly." 
  5. ↑ Raychel Haugrud Reiff, Aldous Huxley: Brave New World, Marshall Cavendish (2009), p. 101
  6. ↑ Dana Sawyer in M. Keith Booker (ed.), Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: H–R, Greenwood Publishing Group (2005), p. 359
  7. ↑ "The Britons who made their mark on LA". The Daily Telegraph. 11 September 2011. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/8751943/The-Britons-who-made-their-mark-on-LA.html. 
  8. ↑ Thody 1973.
  9. ↑ "Nomination Database: Aldous Huxley". https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=4397. 
  10. ↑ "Companions of Literature". Royal Society of Literature. http://rslit.org/companions-of-literature. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Poller 2019, pp. 139–140.
  12. ↑ Thody, Philipe (1973). Huxley: A Biographical Introduction. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-289-70188-1. 
  13. ↑ Dunaway, David K. (1995). Aldous Huxley Recollected: An Oral History. Rowman Altamira. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-7619-9065-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=UFasAs0EHU8C&pg=PA90. 
  14. ↑ Poller 2019, pp. 139-140.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Roy, Pothen & Sunita 2003.
  16. ↑ "Mr Aldous Huxley". The Times (London) (55867): p. 14. 25 November 1963. 
  17. ↑ "Cornhill Magazine". http://digital.nls.uk/jma/topics/publishing/cornhill.html. 
  18. ↑ Sutherland, John (1990) Mrs Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian. Clarendon Press, p. 167.
  19. ↑ Holmes, Charles Mason (1978) Aldous Huxley and the Way to Reality. Greenwood Press, 1978, p. 5.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Bedford, Sybille (1974). Aldous Huxley. Alfred A. Knopf / Harper & Row. 
  21. ↑ Hull, James (2004). Aldous Huxley, Representative Man. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 6. ISBN 978-3-8258-7663-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=bX3EAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA6. 
  22. ↑ M.C. Rintoul (5 March 2014). Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction. Taylor & Francis. p. 509. ISBN 978-1-136-11940-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=P3gBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA509. 
  23. ↑ Huxley, Aldous (1939). "Biography and bibliography (appendix)". After Many A Summer Dies The Swan. 1st Perennial Classic. Harper & Row. p. 243. 
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 Huxley, Aldous (2006). "Aldous Huxley: A Life of the Mind". Brave New World. Harper Perennial Modern Classics / HarperCollins Publishers. 
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Raychel Haugrud Reiff (2009). "Aldous Huxley: Brave New World". p. 112. Marshall Cavendish
  26. ↑ Julian Huxley 1965. Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: a Memorial Volume. Chatto & Windus, London. p. 22
  27. ↑ Crick, Bernard (1992). George Orwell: A Life. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-014563-2. 
  28. ↑ "Brave New World (1932)", Aldous Huxley : A Study of the Major Novels (Bloomsbury Academic), 2013, doi:10.5040/9781472553942.ch-007, ISBN 978-1-4725-1173-7, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472553942.ch-007, retrieved 2023-10-07 
  29. ↑ Sexton 2007, p. 144.
  30. ↑ Weber, Michel (March 2005), Meckier, Jerome; Nugel, Bernfried, eds., "On Religiousness and Religion. Huxley's Reading of Whitehead's Religion in the Making in the Light of James' Varieties of Religious Experience", Aldous Huxley Annual. A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond (Münster: LIT) 5: 117–132, https://www.academia.edu/3268912 .
  31. ↑ Clark, Ronald W (1968), The Huxleys, London: William Heinemann .
  32. ↑ Woodcock, George (2007). Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley. Black Rose Books. p. 240. .
  33. ↑ Murray, Nicholas (4 June 2009). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-7481-1231-9.
  34. ↑ Vitoux, Peter (1972). "Structure and Meaning in Aldous Huxley's 'Eyeless in Gaza'". The Yearbook of English Studies 2: 212–224. doi:10.2307/3506521. 
  35. ↑ Firchow, Peter (1975). "Science and Conscience in Huxley's "Brave New World"". Contemporary Literature 16 (3): 301–316. doi:10.2307/1207404. 
  36. ↑ Watts Estrich, Helen (1939). "Jesting Pilate Tells the Answer: Aldous Huxley". The Sewanee Review 47 (1): 63–81. 
  37. ↑ "Aldous Huxley". Peace Pledge Union. http://www.ppu.org.uk/people/huxley.html. 
  38. ↑ Bucknell, Katherine. "Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood: Writing the Script for Gay Liberation". https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/aldous-huxley-christopher-isherwood-writing-script-gay-liberation/. 
  39. ↑ Symons, Allene (2015) (in en). Aldous Huxley's Hands: His Quest for Perception and the Origin and Return of Psychedelic Science. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-63388-116-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=3cvYCwAAQBAJ. 
  40. ↑ "a book review by Stephen Hren: Aldous Huxley's Hands: His Quest for Perception and the Origin and Return of Psychedelic Science". https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/aldous. 
  41. ↑ "'Aldous Huxley Slept Here' – Illustrated Talk October 12 at West Hollywood Library". Larchmont Buzz. 8 October 2016. https://www.larchmontbuzz.com/the-swarm/aldous-huxley-slept-illustrated-talk-october-12-west-hollywood-library/. 
  42. ↑ Huxley 1937, Chapter IX: War.
  43. ↑ Huxley 1937, Chapter XI: Inequality.
  44. ↑ Huxley 1937, Chapter XIII: Religious practices; Chapter XIV: Beliefs.
  45. ↑ Huxley 1937, Chapter XV: Ethics.
  46. ↑ Vernon, Roland (2000). Star in the East. Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications. pp. 204–207. ISBN 978-0-0947-6480-4. 
  47. ↑ Chandra Roy, Bidhan (2020). "Chapter 14: In Search of a Spiritual Home: Christopher Isherwood, The Perennial Philosophy, and Vedanta". Isherwood in Transit. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 190–201. doi:10.5749/j.ctv1220r9f.18. ISBN 978-1-5179-0910-9. 
  48. ↑ Robb, David (1985). "Brahmins from abroad: English expatriates and spiritual consciousness in modern America". American Studies 26 (2): 45–60. 
  49. ↑ Haugrud Reiff, Raychel (2003) Aldous Huxley: Brave New World p. 103. Marshall Cavendish, 2009
  50. ↑ "Aldous Huxley". https://britishheritage.org/en/aldous-huxley. 
  51. ↑ "$3,000 in 1937 → 2020 | Inflation Calculator". https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1937?amount=3000. 
  52. ↑ Isherwood, Christopher (2013). My Guru and His Disciple. London: Vintage Books. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-0995-6123-1. 
  53. ↑ "7 unproduced screenplays by famous intellectuals". Salon. 15 April 2010. http://www.salon.com/2010/04/15/mcsweeneys_intellectual_screenplays/. 
  54. ↑ Unwin, JD (1940), Hopousia or The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society, NY: Oscar Piest .
  55. ↑ Huxley, Aldous (1969). Grover Smith. ed. Letters of Aldous Huxley. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-1312-4. https://archive.org/details/lettersofaldoush0000unse. 
  56. ↑ Raychel Haugrud Reiff (1 September 2009). Aldous Huxley: Brave New World. Marshall Cavendish. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7614-4701-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=8JyRntokmqYC&pg=PA31. 
  57. ↑ Murray, Nicholas (4 June 2009). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 309. ISBN 978-0-7481-1231-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=7h7CKgXGDi4C&pg=PT309. 
  58. ↑ The New Encyclopædia Britannica. (2003). Volume 6. p. 178
  59. ↑ Boyce, Barry (3 January 2017). "Huston Smith's Fifty Years on the Razor's Edge". Lion's Roar. https://www.lionsroar.com/huston-smith-fifty-years-on-the-razors-edge. Retrieved 13 May 2020. 
  60. ↑ "Aldous Huxley lecture series, "What a Piece of Work Is a Man"". https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/761. 
  61. ↑ Ropp, Robert S. de, Warrior's Way: a Twentieth Century Odyssey (Nevada City, CA: Gateways, 2002). p 247
  62. ↑ Watts, Harold H. (1969). Aldous Huxley. Twayne Publishers. pp. 85–86. 
  63. ↑ "The Mike Wallace Interview: Aldous Huxley (18 May 1958)". 25 July 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ePNGa0m3XA. 
  64. ↑ Sexton 2007, p. 485.
  65. ↑ Birnbaum, Milton (1971). Aldous Huxley's Quest for Values. University of Tennessee Press. p. 407. ISBN 0-87049-127-X. 
  66. ↑ Huxley, Aldous (1963). Literature and Science. Harper & Row. p. 109. 
  67. ↑ Huxley, Aldous (November 1963). "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction". Playboy (Chicago): 175–179. 
  68. ↑ Isherwood, Christopher; Swami Prabhavananda; Aldous, Huxley (1987). Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God. Hollywood, California: Vedanta Press. ISBN 978-0-87481-043-1. 
  69. ↑ Michel Weber, "Perennial Truth and Perpetual Perishing. A. Huxley's Worldview in the Light of A. N. Whitehead's Process Philosophy of Time", in Bernfried Nugel, Uwe Rasch and Gerhard Wagner (eds.), Aldous Huxley, Man of Letters: Thinker, Critic and Artist, Proceedings of the Third International Aldous Huxley Symposium Riga 2004, Münster, LIT, "Human Potentialities", vol. 9, 2007, pp. 31–45.
  70. ↑ Huxley, "Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience"
  71. ↑ Huxley, Aldous letter 26 December 1962 to Humphry Osmond, in Smith, Grover (1969) The Letters of Aldous Huxley. Harper and Row: New York, p. 965.
  72. ↑ McBride, Jason "The Untapped Promise of LSD," in March 2009, The Walrus:Toronto.
  73. ↑ Nugel, Bernfried; Meckier, Jerome (28 February 2011). "A New Look at The Art of Seeing" (in en). Aldous Huxley Annual. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 111. ISBN 978-3-643-10450-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZYFcahCQm4wC&pg=PA109. 
  74. ↑ Cerf, Bennett (12 April 1952), The Saturday Review (column), quoted in Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-20394-2. 
  75. ↑ (in pt) O Conselheiro Come. Editora Nova Fronteira. 2000. p. 92. ISBN 978-85-209-1069-6. https://archive.org/details/oconselheirocome00ribe/page/92. 
  76. ↑ Huxley, Laura (1968). This Timeless Moment. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-89087-968-9. https://archive.org/details/thistimelessmome00huxl. 
  77. ↑ Huxley, Aldous (n.d.). "The Art of Seeing".
  78. ↑ Rolfe, Lionel (1981) Literary LA p. 50. Chronicle Books, 1981. University of California.
  79. ↑ Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, Harper Perennial, 1963, p. 15.
  80. ↑ Johnson, Steven (2004). Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life. New York: Scribner. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-7432-4165-6. https://archive.org/details/mindwideopen00stev/page/235. 
  81. ↑ 81.0 81.1 "Aldous Huxley (Author)" (in en). https://www.onthisday.com/people/aldous-huxley. 
  82. ↑ "Author, NIMH Epidemiologist Matthew Huxley Dies at 84". 17 February 2005 The Washington Post
  83. ↑ Braubach, Mary Ann (2010). "Huxley on Huxley". http://huxleyonhuxley.com/about/synopsis/. 
  84. ↑ Peter Bowering Aldous Huxley: A Study of the Major Novels, p. 197, Oxford University Press, 1969
  85. ↑ Kripal, Jeffrey (2007). Esalen America and the Religion of No Religion. University of Chicago Press. excerpt.
  86. ↑ "Finding Aid for the Aldous and Laura Huxley papers, 1925–2007". Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1489q14s/. 
  87. ↑ "Guide to the Aldous Huxley Collection, 1922–1934". Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives. http://findingaids.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=ead/mss/m0107.xml. 
  88. ↑ 88.0 88.1 88.2 Peter Edgerly Firchow, Hermann Josef Real (2005). The Perennial Satirist: Essays in Honour of Bernfried Nugel, Presented on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, p. 1. LIT Verlag Münster
  89. ↑ "Account of Huxley's death on Letters of Note". Lettersofnote.com. 25 March 2010. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.html. 
  90. ↑ Raychel Haugrud Reiff (2009). "Aldous Huxley: Brave New World". p. 35. Marshall Cavendish
  91. ↑ Nicholas Ruddick (1993). "Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction". p. 28. Greenwood Press
  92. ↑ Bonanos, Christopher (26 June 2009). "The Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club". New York. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2009/06/the_eclipsed_celebrity_death_c.html?gtm=bottom&gtm=bottom. Retrieved 31 October 2018. 
  93. ↑ Kreeft, Peter (1982). Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press. back cover. ISBN 978-0-87784-389-4. "On November 22, 1963, three great men died within hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley. All three believed, in different ways, that death is not the end of human life. Suppose they were right, and suppose they met after death. How might the conversation go?" 
  94. ↑ Murray, Nicholas (2003). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. St. Martin's Press. p. 455. ISBN 978-0312302375. https://archive.org/details/aldoushuxleybiog00murr. Retrieved 9 June 2017. 
  95. ↑ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 22888). McFarland & Company. Kindle Edition.
  96. ↑ Spies 1965, p. 62.
  97. ↑ White 1979, pp. 534, 536–537.
  98. ↑ Chevalier, Tracy (1997). Encyclopedia of the Essay. Routledge. p. 416. ISBN 978-1-57958-342-2. 
  99. ↑ 99.0 99.1 "Stamps to feature original artworks celebrating classic science fiction novels". Yahoo. https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/stamps-feature-original-artworks-celebrating-230100551.html. "Royal Mail has released images of original artworks being issued on a new set of stamps to celebrate six classic science fiction novels by British writers." 

Sources

Further reading

  • Anderson, Jack. 4 July 1982. "Ballet: Suzanne Farrell in Variations Premiere". The New York Times .
  • Atkins, John. Aldous Huxley: A Literary Study, J. Calder, 1956
  • Barnes, Clive. 1 April 1966. "Ballet: Still Another Balanchine-Stravinsky Pearl; City Troupe Performs in Premiere Here Variations for Huxley at State Theater". The New York Times , p. 28.
  • Bromer, David and Shannon Struble. 2011. Aun Aprendo : A Comprehensive Bibliography of the Writings of Aldous Leonard Huxley. Boston: Bromer Booksellers.
  • David King Dunaway (1991). Huxley in Hollywood. Anchor. ISBN 978-0-385-41591-0. 
  • Firchow, Peter. Aldous Huxley: Satirist and Novelist, U of Minnesota P, 1972
  • Firchow, Peter. The End of Utopia: A Study of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Bucknell UP, 1984
  • Grant, Patrick. "Belief in mysticism: Aldous Huxley, from Grey Eminence to Island" in Six Modern Authors and Problems of Belief. MacMillan 1979. ISBN:9780333263402
  • Huxley, Aldous (1952). The Devils of Loudun (appendix). http://www.panarchy.org/huxley/devils.html. 
  • Huxley, Aldous. The Human Situation: Aldous Huxley Lectures at Santa Barbara 1959, Flamingo Modern Classic, 1994, ISBN:0-00-654732-X
  • Huxley, Laura Archera. This Timeless Moment, Celestial Arts, 2001, ISBN:0-89087-968-0
  • Levinson, Martin H. (2018). "Aldous Huxley and General Semantics". ETC: A Review of General Semantics 75 (3 and 4): 290–298. https://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/etc-75-3-4-levinson-aldous-huxley-and-general-semantics.pdf. Retrieved 5 February 2021. 
  • Meckier, Jerome. Aldous Huxley: Modern Satirical Novelist of Ideas, Firchow and Nugel editors, LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2006, ISBN:3-8258-9668-4
  • Morgan, W. John, 'Pacifism or Bourgeois Pacifism? Huxley, Orwell, and Caudwell', Chapter 5 in Morgan, W. John and Guilherme, Alexandre (Eds.),Peace and War-Historical, Philosophical, and Anthropological Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp, 71–96. ISBN:978-3-030-48670-9.
  • Murray, Nicholas. Aldous Huxley, Macmillan, 2003, ISBN:0-312-30237-1
  • Poller, Jake. Aldous Huxley, Reaktion Critical Lives, 2021. ISBN:978-1-78914-427-7.
  • Poller, Jake. Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality, Brill, 2019. ISBN:978-90-04-40689-6.
  • Rolo, Charles J. (ed.). The World of Aldous Huxley, Grosset Universal Library, 1947.
  • Shaw, Jeffrey M. Illusions of Freedom: Thomas Merton and Jacques Ellul on Technology and the Human Condition. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. 2014. ISBN:978-1-62564-058-1.
  • Shadurski, Maxim. The Nationality of Utopia: H. G. Wells, England, and the World State. New York and London: Routledge, 2020. (Chapter 5) ISBN:978-0-36733-049-1
  • Watt, Conrad (ed.). Aldous Huxley, Routledge, 1997, ISBN:0-415-15915-6


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