Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley
Monochrome portrait of Aldous Huxley sitting on a table, facing slightly downwards.
Huxley in 1954
BornAldous 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
Resting placeCompton, Surrey
Occupation
  • Writer
  • philosopher
EducationBalliol College, Oxford
Notable works
Spouse
  • Maria Nys
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1919; died 1955)​
  • ​
    (m. 1956)​
ChildrenMatthew
Relatives
Signature

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 non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a 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][8][12] as well as universalism,[11][13] 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.

  1. ^ Watt, Donald, ed. (1975). Aldous Huxley. Routledge. p. 366. ISBN 978-0-415-15915-9. 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. 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 2009, p. 7: "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 2002, p. 187: "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. ^ Reiff 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. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2018.
  8. ^ a b Thody 1973.
  9. ^ "Nomination Database: Aldous Huxley". Nobel Prize. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  10. ^ "Companions of Literature". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 2 January 2015. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
  11. ^ a b c Poller 2019, pp. 139–140.
  12. ^ Dunaway, David K. (1995). Aldous Huxley Recollected: An Oral History. Rowman Altamira. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-7619-9065-9.
  13. ^ Roy, Pothen & Sunita 2003.