Aldous Huxley Biography

Biography

Type: Writer, novelist

Born: 26 July 1894

Died: 22 November 1963 (aged 69)

He was best known for his novels including Brave New World, set in a dystopian London; for non-fiction books, such as The Doors of Perception, which recalls experiences when taking a psychedelic drug; and a wide-ranging output of essays. Early in his career Huxley edited the magazine Oxford Poetry and published short stories and poetry. Mid career and later, he published travel writing, film stories, and scripts. He spent the later part of his life in the U.S., living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. In 1962, a year before his death, he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. He later became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular universalism. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in seven different years.

Selected works:

Novels:

  • 1921 Crome Yellow
  • 1923 Antic Hay
  • 1925 Those Barren Leaves
  • 1928 Point Counter Point
  • 1932 Brave New World
  • 1936 Eyeless in Gaza
  • 1939 After Many a Summer
  • 1944 Time Must Have a Stop
  • 1948 Ape and Essence
  • 1955 The Genius and the Goddess
  • 1962 Island

Aldous Huxley Quotes

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly - they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

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