Aldous Huxley

At 69 years old, Aldous Huxley has this physical status:

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and scholar.

He wrote nearly fifty books, including novels and non-fiction, as well as wide-ranging essays, stories, and poems. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature, and he belonged to the influential Huxley family.

He began publishing short stories and poems early in his career, edited Oxford Poetry, and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before moving on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays.

He lived in Los Angeles from 1937 to his death, and spent the latter part of his life in the United States.

Huxley was widely respected as one of the twentieth century's most influential scholars.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times and was named Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

He became interested in philosophical mysticism and universalism, as well as The Perennial Philosopher (1945) — which reveals connections between Western and Eastern mysticism — and The Doors of Perception (1954), which describes his own psychedelic encounter with mescaline.

He illustrated his visions of dystopia and utopia in his best-known book Brave New World (1932) and his final book Island (1962).

Early life

Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894. He was the third son of writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, editor of The Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Julia was the niece and aunt of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the niece of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a fictional character in one of her sister's books. Aldous, the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversial figure who had often been referred to as "Darwin's Bulldog" in the media. Julian Huxley and his half-brother Andrew Huxley were both outstanding biologists. Noel Trevenen Huxley (1889-1914), Aldous' younger brother who died after a bout of clinical depression, died.

Huxley's nickname as an infant was "Ogie," which was short for "ogre." Julian, his brother, referred to him as someone who "contemplated] the strangeness of things." He had a keen interest in drawing from the beginning, according to his cousin and contemporary Gervas Huxley.

Huxley's education began in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, which he attended at Hillside School near Godalming. He was taught by his own mother for several years before she became terminally ill at Hillside. His mother died in 1908, when he was 14 (his father later remarried). In 1911, he contracted Keratitis punctata, which "left [him] practically blind for two to three years." This "ended his early hopes of becoming a doctor." Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He joined the British Army in January 1916 during the Great War but was turned down on health grounds after being half-blind in one eye. His eyesight was back in a little while. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916 and graduated from the University of Oxford with first-class honors in June.

His brother Julian wrote:

Balliol, Huxley's father being financially dependent, he's looking for work. Eric Blair (who was going to take the pen name George Orwell) and Steven Runciman were among his students for a year at Eton College. He was mainly remembered as an incompetent schoolmaster who was unable to keep order in class. Nevertheless, Blair and others praised his command of words.

Huxley was employed at Brunner and Mond, an advanced chemical plant in Billingham, northeast England, for a time in the 1920s. The experience he had with "an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence" was a key source for the novel, according to an introduction to his science fiction book Brave New World (1932).

Late-in-life perspectives

Huxley's writings during the "final and extended period of his life" are "the work of a man who is contemplating the central problems of many modern men," according to biographer Harold H. Watts. Huxley had deep reservations about the future that the industrial world might have created for itself. He gave some warnings in his writings and discussions from these. Huxley's televised interview in 1958 outlined several key issues: the challenges and risks of world overpopulation; the shift towards more hierarchical social structure; and the importance of assessing the use of technology in mass societies vulnerable to persuasion; and the tendency to promote modern politicians to a naive audience as well-marketed commodities. "I said that if we didn't really start thinking of human problems in ecological terms rather than in terms of control politics," he wrote in a letter to brother Julian in December 1962, "we'll soon be in a bad way."

Huxley's fascination with Eastern wisdom traditions was perfectly compatible with a strong appreciation of modern science. Huxley "ended by adopting both science and Eastern faith," according to biographer Milton Birnbaum. "The ethical and philosophical implications of modern science are more Buddhist than Christian," Huxley wrote in "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction," which was published one month before his death. "We must learn how to be physically present and can cultivate the art of pure receptivity."

Personal life

Maria Nys, a Belgian epidemiologist from Bellem, a village near Aalter, was born on July 10, 1919. Until 1955, Huxley was a member of the Royal Society of Oxfordshire. Matthew Huxley (19 April 1920 to February 2005), who worked as an author, anthropologist, and a respected epidemiologist, was their one child. Maria Huxley died of cancer in 1955.

Laura Archera (1911–2007), as an author as well as a violinist and psychotherapist, was married in 1956. This Timeless Moment, a biography of Huxley, was written by Sheryl Huxley. Through Mary Ann Braubach's 2010 film Huxley on Huxley, she told the tale of their marriage.

Huxley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 1960, but in the years that followed, he wrote the utopian book Island and gave talks on "Human Potentialities" both at the UCSF Medical Center and at the Esalen Institute. These lectures were essential to the emergence of the Human Potential Movement.

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

The following the demise of most of Huxley's few remaining papers in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, the University of California's Los Angeles Library holds the most complete collection of the latter's few remaining copies. A few of the Stanford University Libraries are also located at the Stanford University Libraries.

Huxley was informed by the Royal Society of Literature, Britain's top literary group, that he had been elected Companion of Literature, on September 9, 1962, and he accepted the honor by letter on April 28, 1962. At the Cambridge University Library, Huxley's correspondence with the society is preserved. In June 1963, Huxley was invited to attend a banquet and deliver a lecture at Somerset House, London. Huxley wrote a draft of the address he intended to give to the society, but due to his declining health, he was unable to attend.

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Career

Huxley wrote his first (unpublished) book in his early twenties and started writing regularly in his early twenties, establishing himself as a prolific writer and social satirist. Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928) were among his first published novels. Brave New World (1932) was his fifth book and first dystopian work. He was also a contributor to Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines in the 1920s.

Huxley lived at Garsington Manor near Oxford, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, during the First World War. Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Clive Bell all attended the Manor. He caricatured the Garsington lifestyle in Crome Yellow (1921). Jobs were scarce in 1919, but John Middleton Murry reorganized Athenaeum and welcomed Huxley to join the workforce. Maria Nys (1899–1955), a Belgian immigrant, was accepted immediately and married Maria Nys (1899–1955), also at Garsington. They lived in Italy during the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend D. H. Lawrence. Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1932), following Lawrence's death in 1930. Huxley met Gerald Heard, a writer and broadcaster, philosopher, and interpreter of modern science, in 1929 in London.

Novels about the dehumanizing aspects of scientific progress (his magnum opus Brave New World) and pacifist themes (Eyeless in Gaza) were among the period's works (and his pacifist themes). Huxley's Brave New World, a dystopian London, depicts a society ruled by mass production and Pavlovian conditioning. In Gaza (1936), Huxley was heavily influenced by F. Matthias Alexander and included him as a character.

Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction books on pacifist topics, including Ends and Means (1937), An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, Pacifism, and Philosophy (1937), and Peace Pledge Union member David Coveney (1937).

Huxley, his wife Maria, son Matthew Huxley, and a colleague Gerald Heard travelled to Hollywood in 1937. He lived in the United States, mostly southern California, until his death, and in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote Ends and Means (1937). The book contains tracts on war, religion, nationalism, and ethics.

Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta (Upanishad-centered philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism based on the principle of ahimsa. Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings he adored. Huxley and Krishnamurti began a long friendship (sometimes edging on debate), with Krishnamurti illustrating the more rarefied, detached, ivory-tower view and Huxley in the more socially and historically informed position. Huxley wrote a foreword to Krishnamurti's classic 'The First and Last Freedom (1954).

Huxley was introduced to them by Christopher Isherwood, who became a Vedantist in the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda. Huxley's book, The Perennial Philosophy, which addressed the teachings of world-renowned mystics, appeared not long after. Huxley's book affirmed a sensibility that claims that there are truths beyond the commonly accepted "five senses" and that human beings have more meaning than sensual pleasures and sentiments.

Huxley, a close friend of Remsen Bird, president of Occidental College, became a close friend of the university. He spent a long time in Los Angeles's Eagle Rock neighborhood. In his satirical book "After Many a Summer (1939), the college appears as "Tarzana College." The book was shortlisted for the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the British Literary Award, Huxley. Birds were also included in Huxley's story.

Huxley made a good living as a screenwriter during this period, according to Christopher Isherwood's autobiography My Guru and His Disciple, Huxley earned more than $3,000 per week (roughly $50,000) per week, despite the fact that he used a large part of it to move Jewish and left-wing writer and artist refugees from Hitler's Germany to the United States. Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who had recruited him for Madame Curie, which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor in March 1938. (Eventually, MGM completed the film with a new director and cast members.) Huxley was given screen credit for Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was compensated for his appearances on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). In 1945, Walt Disney asked Lewis Carroll 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 intended, but it was not used.

Huxley authored an introduction to J. D. Unwin's 1940 book Hopousia: The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society.

Huxley wrote to George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is" on October 21, 1949.

In his letter, he predicted:

Huxley and Maria applied for citizenship in the United States in 1953 and appeared for examination. The judge had to adjourn the proceedings when Huxley refused to bear arms for the United States and would not say that his objections were based on religious ideals, the only excuse allowed under the McCarran Act. He turned down his offer. Nonetheless, he remained in the United States. Huxley turned down an invitation to be made a Knight Bachelor by the Macmillan administration without giving a reason; his brother Julian was knighted in 1958, while his brother Andrew was knighted in 1974.

Huxley was invited by Professor Huston Smith to be the Carnegie Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall semester (MIT). Huxley delivered a series of lectures titled "What a Piece of Work is a Man," which was part of the Department of Humanities' centennial series of activities, including history, literature, and art.

Robert S. de Ropp (scientist, philologist, and author), who spent time with Huxley in the 1930s, connected with him in the United States in the early 1960s, writing that "the vast intellect, the beautifully modulated voice, and the soft objectivity remained unchanged." He was one of the most civilized human beings I've ever met.

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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)