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Aldous Huxley

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  Aldous Leonard Huxley was born July 26, 1894 in the town of Godalming in the county of Surrey, in England. He was born into a family of scientists, critics, lecturers and educators. His grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a biologist who was often called "Darwin's bullfrog" because of his open support of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, which were at that time very controversial. T.H. Huxley's son and Aldous Huxley's father was Leonard Huxley, was the author of many biographies and the editor of the literary Cornhill Magazine. Aldous Huxley's mother was Julia Arnold, who was a schoolmistress. Aldous also had two older brothers-Julian, who became a world-famous biologist, and Trevenen. When he was eight years old, his sister, Margaret, was born.

  Aldous, keeping up the family tradition, went to Eton. When he was only fourteen, his mother, Julia, very suddenly died of cancer. Aldous planned on being a doctor when he got out of school, but at age sixteen, he was stricken by a streptococcal infection in his eyes, which left him completely blind for a whole year. But he recovered somewhat, although he would never completely regain all his vision, and went on to college. Aldous attended Balliol College, Oxford. Another tragedy happened when Aldous was twenty- his brother, Trevenen, who had been suffering from chronic depression, committed suicide. Despite all this, Huxley managed to graduate with his Oxford degree and first-class honors. He also published two volumes of poetry during college (dates and titles unknown). After college, he first worked as a teacher at Eton (where on of his students was Eric Blair-George Orwell). After that, Aldous moved to London and got a job as a literary journalist. He worked for the Athenaeum, Vanity Fair, and Vogue.

  In 1919, Aldous was married to Maria Nys, a Belgian woman. Their only son was born the next year, and named Matthew. In 1921, Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow, was published and very well received. After this, the Huxley family moved and travelled quite a bit- between Italy, France, the USA and India. Somehow, Huxley also managed to publish several collections of essays and a few novels. In 1928, Point Counter Point was published, followed by Brave New World in 1932. Brave New World was a biting satire about a twisted "utopia," and it was an instant classic. Today it is translated into two dozen languages.

  In 1934, Aldous suffered a bad case of writer's block, after finishing Eyeless in Gaza. The following year, Aldous cured his depression and insomnia by becoming an active pacifist and beginning meditation. In 1937, Aldous packed up his family and moved to the U.S., along with a friend author- Gerald Heard. They lived for a little while on D.H. Lawrence's ranch in New Mexico, and toured the southwest with their lectures on pacifism. In 1938, the Huxleys settled in Hollywood, CA. Huxley ended up working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth-Century Fox, where he wrote screenplays. Huxley wrote many novels, essays and screenplays during this time (see the works page for more info).

  In 1951, Huxley was blinded for the second time in his life, because of a case of iritis. He recovered a little, as before, but remained mostly blind for the rest of his life. Also in the 1950's, Huxley experimented widely with mind-altering drugs like LSD and mescaline. He was very interested in mysticism and one reason why he may have used these drugs was to reach a mystic state or to escape reality. It was during this time of drug-experimenting that The Doors of Perception was published. In 1955, Maria Huxley, Aldous' wife, died, from breast cancer.

  The year after Maria's death, Aldous married again- this time to Laura Archera, also a writer. In 1960, Huxley unfortunately was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. In 1962, Huxley's last novel Island was published. The very next year, Aldous died. His death, on November 22, 1963, occurred on the same day as President Kennedy's assassination and C.S. Lewis' death.

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