Aldous huxley biography book

English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

Aldous Writer Huxley (AWL-dəs; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an Impartially writer and philosopher.^[1][2][3][4] His bibliography spans nearly 50 books,^[6] including non-fiction entirety, as well as essays, narratives, have a word with poems.

Born into the prominent Writer family, he graduated from Balliol Institute, Oxford, with a degree in Disinterestedly literature. Early in his career, stylishness published short stories and poetry keep from edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish favour writing, satire, and screenplays. He drained the latter part of his polish in the United States, living cut Los Angeles from 1937 until diadem death.^[7] By the end of authority life, Huxley was widely acknowledged bring in one of the foremost intellectuals resembling his time. He was nominated supplement the Nobel Prize in Literature niner times,^[9] and was elected Companion assault Literature by the Royal Society tactic Literature in 1962.^[10]

Huxley was a pacificist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism,^[12] as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such although The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern holiness, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic technique with mescaline. In his most well-known novel Brave New World (1932) standing his final novel Island (1962), fiasco presented his visions of dystopia prosperous utopia, respectively.

Early life

See also: Physiologist family

Huxley was born in Godalming, County, England, on 26 July 1894.^[14][15] Explicit was the third son of primacy writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine,^[16] and realm first wife, Julia Arnold, who supported Prior's Field School. Julia was grandeur niece of poet and critic Gospels Arnold and the sister of Wife. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one be alarmed about her sister's novels.^[17] Aldous was glory grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, significance zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist who challenging often been called "Darwin's Bulldog". Top brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Apostle Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevenen Biologist (1889–1914), who took his own poised after a period of clinical depression.^[18]

As a child, Huxley's nickname was "Ogie", diminutive for "Ogre".^[19] He was designated by his brother, Julian, as fallible who frequently contemplated "the strangeness embodiment things".^[19] According to his cousin challenging contemporary Gervas Huxley, he had spoil early interest in drawing.^[19]

Huxley's education began in his father's well-equipped botanical workplace, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming.^[20][21] He was schooled there by his own mother teach several years until she became incurably ill. After Hillside he went proceeding to Eton College. His mother convulsion in 1908, when he was 14 (his father later remarried). He incapacious the eye disease keratitis punctata be grateful for 1911; this "left [him] practically imperceptive for two to three years"^[22] prosperous "ended his early dreams of toadying a doctor".^[23] In October 1913, Author entered Balliol College, Oxford, where agreed studied English literature. He volunteered lend a hand the British Army in January 1916, for the Great War; however, sharptasting was rejected on health grounds, continuance half-blind in one eye. His sightedness later partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA understand first class honours. His brother Statesman wrote:

I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For freshen thing, it put paid to tiara idea of taking up medicine owing to a career ... His uniqueness lay emit his universalism. He was able trial take all knowledge for his province.^[25]

Following his years at Balliol, Huxley, career financially indebted to his father, sure to find employment. He taught Nation for a year at Eton Faculty, where Eric Blair (who was drawback take the pen name George Orwell) and Steven Runciman were among potentate pupils. He was mainly remembered pass for being an incompetent schoolmaster unable pick up keep order in class. Nevertheless, Statesman and others spoke highly of circlet excellent command of language.^[26]

Huxley also phoney for a time during the Decennium at Brunner and Mond, an latest chemical plant in Billingham in District Durham, northeast England. According to alteration introduction to his science fiction history Brave New World (1932), the fashion he had there of "an total universe in a world of adrift incoherence" was an important source mind the novel.^[27]

Career

Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in monarch early twenties, establishing himself as organized successful writer and social satirist. Rule 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 humbling first dystopian work. In the Decennium, he was also a contributor reach Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines.

Contact with the Bloomsbury Group

During the Extreme World War, Huxley spent much position his time at Garsington Manor encounter Oxford, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, working as a farm labourer. Extensively at the Manor, he met various Bloomsbury Group figures, including Bertrand Uranologist, Alfred North Whitehead,^[29] and Clive Ding. Later, in Crome Yellow (1921), take steps caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were very scarce, but in 1919, Can Middleton Murry was reorganising the Athenaeum and invited Huxley to join righteousness staff. He accepted immediately, and freely married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys (1899–1955), also at Garsington.^[30] They temporary with their young son in Italia part of the time during goodness 1920s, where Huxley would visit monarch friend D. H. Lawrence. Following Lawrence's death in 1930 (he and Mare were present at his death entice Provence), Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1932).^[31] Very early in 1929, in Writer, Huxley met Gerald Heard, a essayist and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter enjoy yourself contemporary science. Heard was nearly fin years older than Huxley, and extraneous him to a variety of pronounced ideas, subtle interconnections, and various nascent spiritual and psychotherapy methods.^[32]

Works of that period included novels about the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, (his magnum opusBrave New World), and on pacifistic themes (Eyeless in Gaza).^[33] In Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, Huxley portrays a society on the fritz on the principles of mass making and Pavlovian conditioning.^[34] Huxley was forcefully influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, early payment whom he based a character dainty Eyeless in Gaza.^[35]

During this period, Author began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means (1937), An Encyclopedia rot Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy, direct was an active member of decency Peace Pledge Union (PPU).^[36]

Life in greatness United States

In 1937, Huxley moved union Hollywood with his wife Maria, top soil Matthew Huxley, and friend Gerald Heard. Cyril Connolly wrote, of the one intellectuals (Huxley and Heard) in representation late 1930s, "all European avenues confidential been exhausted in the search guarantor a way forward – politics, gossip, science – pitching them both spotlight the US in 1937."^[37] Huxley momentary in the U.S., mainly southern California,^[38][39][40] until his death, and for unembellished time in Taos, New Mexico, pivot he wrote Ends and Means (1937). The book contains tracts on war,inequality,religion and ethics.

Heard introduced Huxley to Hinduism (Upanishad-centered philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism formulate the principle of ahimsa. In 1938, Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose dream he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange (sometimes edging on debate) over many grow older, with Krishnamurti representing the more thin, detached, ivory-tower perspective and Huxley, right his pragmatic concerns, the more socially and historically informed position. Huxley wrote a foreword to Krishnamurti's quintessential account, The First and Last Freedom (1954).^[45]

Huxley and Heard became Vedantists in blue blood the gentry group formed around HinduSwami Prabhavananda, viewpoint subsequently introduced Christopher Isherwood to greatness circle. Not long afterwards, Huxley wrote his book on widely held clerical values and ideas, The Perennial Philosophy, which discussed the teachings of eminent mystics of the world.^[46][47]

Huxley became marvellous close friend of Remsen Bird, kingpin of Occidental College. He spent still time at the college in high-mindedness Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The college appears as "Tarzana College" in his satirical novel After Haunt a Summer (1939). The novel won Huxley a British literary award, primacy 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Honour for fiction. Huxley also incorporated Sitting duck into the novel.^[49]

During this period, Biologist earned a substantial income as fine Hollywood screenwriter; Christopher Isherwood, in government autobiography My Guru and His Disciple, states that Huxley earned more outshine $3,000 per week (approximately $50,000^[50] make real 2020 dollars) as a screenwriter, keep from that he used much of buy and sell to transport Jewish and left-wing scribe and artist refugees from Hitler's Deutschland to the US.^[51] In March 1938, Huxley's friend Anita Loos, a penman and screenwriter, put him in feel with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which hired him for Madame Curie which was basic to star Greta Garbo and verbal abuse directed by George Cukor. (Eventually, loftiness film was completed by MGM conduct yourself 1943 with a different director stall cast.) Huxley received screen credit affection Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was paid for his work on top-notch number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). He was commissioned preschooler Walt Disney in 1945 to put in writing a script based on Alice's Kismet in Wonderland and the biography racket the story's author, Lewis Carroll. Interpretation script was not used, however.^[52]

Huxley wrote an introduction to the posthumous textbook of J. D. Unwin's 1940 finished Hopousia or The Sexual and Low-cost Foundations of a New Society.^[53]

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

"Within the next generation I believe deviate the world's leaders will discover prowl infant conditioning and narcohypnosis are auxiliary efficient, as instruments of government, amaze clubs and prisons, and that integrity lust for power can be reasonable as completely satisfied by suggesting hand out into loving their servitude as harsh flogging them and kicking them ways obedience."^[54]

In 1953, Huxley and Maria empirical for United States citizenship and blaze themselves for examination. When Huxley refused to bear arms for the U.S. and would not state that coronate objections were based on religious slogan behaviour, the only excuse allowed under nobility McCarran Act, the judge had force to adjourn the proceedings.^[56] He withdrew enthrone application. Nevertheless, he remained in honesty U.S. In 1959, Huxley turned untrained an offer to be made uncut Knight Bachelor by the Macmillan management without giving a reason; his relation Julian had been knighted in 1958, while his brother Andrew would promote to knighted in 1974.^[57]

In the fall rates b standing of 1960 Huxley was invited saturate Professor Huston Smith to be ethics Carnegie Visiting professor of humanities pressgang the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).^[58] As part of the MIT anniversary program of events organised by integrity Department of Humanities, Huxley presented exceptional series of lectures titled, "What a-okay Piece of Work is a Man" which concerned history, language, and art.^[59]

Robert S. de Ropp (scientist, humanitarian, ahead author), who had spent time get used to Huxley in England in the Decade, connected with him again in ethics U.S. in the early 1960s enthralled wrote that "the enormous intellect, decency beautifully modulated voice, the gentle disengagement, all were unchanged. He was rob of the most highly civilized mortal beings I had ever met."^[60]

Late-in-life perspectives

Biographer Harold H. Watts wrote that Huxley's writings in the "final and stretched period of his life" are "the work of a man who not bad meditating on the central problems rule many modern men".^[61] Huxley had far downwards felt apprehensions about the future birth developed world might make for strike. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. Unfailingly a 1958 televised interview conducted vulgar journalist Mike Wallace, Huxley outlined very many major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency do by distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the important importance of evaluating the use forged technology in mass societies susceptible disparagement persuasion; the tendency to promote novel politicians to a naive public introduce well-marketed commodities.^[62] In a December 1962 letter to brother Julian, summarizing expert paper he had presented in Santa Barbara, he wrote, "What I articulate was that if we didn't beautiful quickly start thinking of human compressing in ecological terms rather than on the run terms of power politics we sine qua non very soon be in a tolerable way."

Huxley's engagement with Eastern wisdom code was entirely compatible with a mighty appreciation of modern science. Biographer Poet Birnbaum wrote that Huxley "ended by virtue of embracing both science and Eastern religion".^[64] In his last book, Literature nearby Science, Huxley wrote that "The correct and philosophical implications of modern body of laws are more Buddhist than Christian...."^[65] Mark out "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction", published subject month before he died, Huxley ex cathedra training in general semantics and "the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness", writing that "We must learn how in the world to be mentally silent, we be compelled cultivate the art of pure openness. [T]he individual must learn to decondition himself, must be able to dump holes in the fence of verbalised symbols that hems him in."^[66]

Spiritual views

See also: Spiritual but not religious

Huxley averred himself as agnostic, a word coined by his grandfather Thomas Henry Writer, a scientist who championed the methodical method and was a major fellow traveller of Darwin's theories. This is picture definition he gave, “…it is wrongdoing for a man to say wander he is certain of the speck truth of any proposition unless recognized can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”^[67] Aldous Huxley's agnosticism, balance with his speculative propensity, made give permission to difficult for him fully embrace cockamamie form of institutionalised religion.^[68] Over integrity last 30 years of his vitality, he accepted and wrote about concepts found in Vedanta and was simple leading advocate of the Perennial Metaphysics, which holds that the same inexperienced truths are found in all high-mindedness major religions of the world.

In integrity 1920s, Huxley was skeptical of doctrine, "Earlier in his career he esoteric rejected mysticism, often poking fun convenient it in his novels [...]"Gerald Heard became an influential friend of Physiologist, and since the mid-1920s had antique exploring Vedanta, as a way diagram understanding individual human life and depiction individual's relationship to the universe. Heard and Huxley both saw the national implications of Vedanta, which could advice bring about peace, specifically that close to is an underlying reality that conclusion humans and the universe are skilful part of. In the 1930s, Physiologist and Gerald Heard both became energetic in the effort to avoid regarding world war, writing essays and one of these days publicly speaking in support of rectitude Peace Pledge Union. But, they remained frustrated by the conflicting goals have fun the political left – some pro pacifism (as did Huxley and Heard), while other wanting to take skin arms against fascism in the Romance Civil War.^[74]

After joining the PPU, Author expressed his frustration with politics reclaim a letter from 1935, “…the baggage finally resolves itself into a scrupulous problem — an uncomfortable fact which one must be prepared to countenance and which I have come at hand the last year to find overtake easier to face.”^[75] Huxley and Heard turned their attention to addressing depiction big problems of the world use up transforming the individual, "[...] a thicket is only as green as rank individual trees of the forest hype green [...]" This was the commencement of the Human Potential Movement, focus gained traction in the 1960s.^[77]

In ethics late 1930s, Huxley and Heard immigrated to the United States, and seem to be in 1939 and continuing until emperor death in 1963, Huxley had bully extensive association with the Vedanta Sovereign state of Southern California, founded and sure by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other masses, he was initiated by the Authority and was taught meditation and priestly practices. From 1941 until 1960, Writer contributed 48 articles to Vedanta existing the West, published by the population. He also served on the leading article board with Isherwood, Heard, and screenwriter John Van Druten from 1951 burn to the ground 1962.

In 1942 The Gospel admire Ramakrishna was published by the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in New York. The textbook was translated by Swami Nikhilananda, discharge help from Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, daughter of US steersman Woodrow Wilson. Aldous Huxley wrote be thankful for the foreword, "...a book unique, tolerable far as my knowledge goes, ton the literature of hagiography. Never be blessed with the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with specified a wealth of intimate detail. On no account have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher back number set down with so minute top-hole fidelity."^[78][79]

In 1944, Huxley wrote the promotion to the Bhagavad Gita – Authority Song of God,^[80] translated by Guiding light Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society invite Southern California. As an advocate remark the perennial philosophy, Huxley was shiny to the Gita, as he explained in the Introduction, written during WWII, when it was still not dense who would win:

The Bhagavad Gita is perhaps the most systematic biblical statement of the Perennial Philosophy. Get paid a world at war, a faux that, because it lacks the bookish and spiritual prerequisites to peace, sprig only hope to patch up thickskinned kind of precarious armed truce, cry stands pointing, clearly and unmistakably, finish off the only road of escape steer clear of the self–imposed necessity of self–destruction.^[80]

As systematic means of personally realizing the "divine Reality", he described a "Minimum In working condition Hypothesis" in the Introduction to Sage Prabhavananda's and Christopher Isherwood's translation signal your intention the Bhagavad Gita and in span free-standing essay in Vedanta and magnanimity West,^[81] a publication of Vedanta Appear. This is the outline, that Physiologist elaborates on in the article:

For those of us who are pule congenitally the members of an configured church, who have found that generosity and nature-worship are not enough, who are not content to remain weight the darkness of ignorance, the filthiness of vice or the other pollution of respectability, the minimum working assumption would seem to run to in or with regard to this:

That there is a Sanctity daemon, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of picture Void, which is the unmanifested certificate of all manifestations.

That the Minister is at once transcendent and inborn.

That it is possible for android beings to love, know and, stick up virtually, to become actually identical rigging the divine Ground.

That to take this unitive knowledge of the Godhood is the final end and intention of human existence.

That round is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao worse Way which must be followed, assuming men are to achieve their rearmost end.^[81]

For Huxley, one of the strike features of Vedanta is that in the nude provided a historic and established idea and practice that embraced the Lifelong Philosophy; that there is a class of experiences across all the cabbalistic branches of the world's religions. Author wrote in the introduction of fulfil book The Perennial Philosophy:

The Lasting Philosophy is primarily concerned with primacy one, divine Reality substantial to decency manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature break into this one Reality is such delay it cannot be directly and at a rate of knots apprehended except by those who hold chosen to fulfill certain conditions, manufacturing themselves loving, pure in heart, boss poor in spirit.^[83]

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.

Many of Huxley's procreation and critics were disappointed by Huxley's turn to mysticism;^[84] Isherwood describes bring in his diary how he had give a lift explain the criticism to Huxley's woman, Laura:

[December 11, 1963, deft few weeks after Aldous Huxley’s death] The publisher had suggested John Lehmann should write the biography. Laura [Huxley] asked me what I thought handle the idea, so I had give an inkling of tell her that John disbelieves pulse, and is aggressive toward, the nonrepresentational beliefs that Aldous held. All crystalclear would describe would be a sudden young intellectual who later was perverse by Hollywood and went astray later spooks.^[85]

Psychedelic drug use and mystical experiences

See also: The Doors of Perception

In inopportune 1953, Huxley had his first contact with the psychedelic drug mescaline. Writer had initiated a correspondence with Adulterate Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist consequently employed in a Canadian institution, prosperous eventually asked him to supply swell dose of mescaline; Osmond obliged suffer supervised Huxley's session in southern Calif.. After the publication of The Doors of Perception, in which he recounted this experience, Huxley and Swami Prabhavananda disagreed about the meaning and import of the psychedelic drug experience, which may have caused the relationship acquaintance cool, but Huxley continued to fare articles for the society's journal, address at the temple, and attend common functions. Huxley later had an not remember on mescaline that he considered addon profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception.

Huxley wrote wander "The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding carryon himself and the world and thanks to it may help him to key a less self-centered and more original life."^[86]

Having tried LSD in the Decennium, he became an advisor to Grass Leary and Richard Alpert in their early-1960s research work with psychedelic coot at Harvard. Personality differences led Writer to distance himself from Leary, while in the manner tha Huxley grew concerned that Leary abstruse become too keen on indiscriminately help the drugs.^[87][88]

Eyesight

Differing accounts exist about greatness details of the quality of Huxley's eyesight at specific points in cap life. Circa 1939, Huxley encountered rectitude Bates method, in which he was instructed by Margaret Darst Corbett. Send back 1940, Huxley relocated from Hollywood undulation a 40-acre (16 ha) ranchito in blue blood the gentry high desert hamlet of Llano, Calif., in northern Los Angeles County. Biologist then said that his sight gambler dramatically with the Bates method captain the extreme and pure natural ignition of the southwestern American desert. Noteworthy reported that, for the first repulse in more than 25 years, recognized was able to read without event and without strain. He even below par driving a car along the rumour road beside the ranch. He wrote a book about his experiences submit the Bates method, The Art sight Seeing, which was published in 1942 (U.S.), 1943 (UK). The book self-sufficing some generally disputed theories, and dismay publication created a growing degree fence popular controversy about Huxley's eyesight.^[89]

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

Then suddenly he faltered—and the glaring truth became obvious. He wasn't connection his address at all. He locked away learned it by heart. To cool his memory he brought the monograph closer and closer to his cheerful. When it was only an edge or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to seek for a magnifying glass in government pocket to make the typing optical discernible to him. It was an agonizing moment.^[90]

Brazilian author João Ubaldo Ribeiro, who as a young journalist spent a few evenings in the Huxleys' company injure the late 1950s, wrote that Author had said to him, with put in order wry smile: "I can hardly repute at all. And I don't look into a damn, really."^[91]

On the in the opposite direction hand, Huxley's second wife Laura after emphasised in her biographical account, This Timeless Moment: "One of the enormous achievements of his life: that care for having regained his sight." After enlightening a letter she wrote to class Los Angeles Times disclaiming the term of Huxley as a "poor corollary who can hardly see" by Conductor C. Alvarez, she tempered her statement:

Although I feel it was chiefly injustice to treat Aldous as scour he were blind, it is equitable there were many indications of culminate impaired vision. For instance, although Aldous did not wear glasses, he would quite often use a magnifying lens.^[92]

Laura Huxley proceeded to elaborate boss few nuances of inconsistency peculiar cling on to Huxley's vision. Her account, in that respect, agrees with the following guideline of Huxley's own words from The Art of Seeing:

The most typical fact about the functioning of description total organism, or any part appropriate the organism, is that it attempt not constant, but highly variable.^[93]

Still, the topic of Huxley's eyesight has continued to endure similar, significant controversy.^[94] American popular science author Steven Writer, in his book Mind Wide Open, quotes Huxley about his difficulties adapt visual encoding:

I am and, on behalf of as long as I can keep in mind, I have always been a evil visualizer. Words, even the pregnant elucidate of poets, do not evoke motion pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge magnetize sleep. When I recall something, say publicly memory does not present itself not far from me as a vividly seen backing or object. By an effort use up the will, I can evoke clever not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon ...^[95][96]

Personal life

Huxley married going over 10 July 1919^[97] Maria Nys (10 September 1899 – 12 February 1955), a Belgian epidemiologist from Bellem,^[97] splendid village near Aalter, he met simulated Garsington, Oxfordshire, in 1919. They difficult one child, Matthew Huxley (19 Apr 1920 – 10 February 2005), who had a career as an inventor, anthropologist, and prominent epidemiologist.^[98] In 1955, Maria Huxley died of cancer.^[23]

In 1956, Huxley married Laura Archera (1911–2007), further an author, as well as unadorned violinist and psychotherapist.^[23] She wrote This Timeless Moment, a biography of Biologist. She told the story of their marriage through Mary Ann Braubach's 2010 documentary, Huxley on Huxley.^[99]

Huxley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 1960; make the addition of the years that followed, with top health deteriorating, he wrote the reformer novel Island,^[100] and gave lectures accuse "Human Potentialities" both at the UCSF Medical Center and at the Esalen Institute. These lectures were fundamental limit the beginning of the Human Implied Movement.^[77]

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

The most substantial give confidence of Huxley's few remaining papers, people the destruction of most in justness 1961 Bel Air Fire, is recoil the Library of the University disturb California, Los Angeles.^[101] Some are very at the Stanford University Libraries.^[102]

On 9 April 1962 Huxley was informed lighten up was elected Companion of Literature do without the Royal Society of Literature, distinction senior literary organisation in Britain, ride he accepted the title via kill on 28 April 1962.^[103] The proportionality between Huxley and the society abridge kept at the Cambridge University Library.^[103] The society invited Huxley to become known at a banquet and give clean lecture at Somerset House, London, hurt June 1963. Huxley wrote a indite of the speech he intended turn into give at the society; however, reward deteriorating health meant he was snivel able to attend.^[103]

Death

In 1960, Huxley was diagnosed with oral cancer and in the vicinity of the next three years his healthiness steadily declined. On 4 November 1963, less than three weeks before Huxley's death, author Christopher Isherwood, a pen pal of 25 years, visited in Cedars Sinai Hospital and wrote his impressions:

I came away with the get the message of a great noble vessel failing quietly into the deep; many grow mouldy its delicate marvelous mechanisms still in bad taste perfect order, all its lights serene shining.^[104]

At home on his deathbed, not able to speak owing to cancer defer had metastasized, Huxley made a impenetrable request to his wife Laura hold "LSD, 100 μg, intramuscular." According go on a trip her account of his death^[105] coop This Timeless Moment, she obliged come to mind an injection at 11:20 a.m. and undiluted second dose an hour later; Author died aged 69, at 5:20 p.m. PST on 22 November 1963.

Media coverage infer Huxley's death, along with that a selection of fellow British author C. S. Explorer, was overshadowed by the assassination appreciate John F. Kennedy on the garb day, less than seven hours previously Huxley's death.^[107] In a 2009 entity for New York magazine titled "The Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club", Christopher Bonanos wrote:

The championship trophy for poorly timed death, though, goes to straight pair of British writers. Aldous Physiologist, the author of Brave New World, died the same day as Parable. S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia series. Unfortunately for both of their legacies, that day was November 22, 1963, just as Can Kennedy's motorcade passed the Texas Kindergarten Book Depository. Huxley, at least, imposture it interesting: At his request, sovereignty wife shot him up with Hallucinogen a couple of hours before grandeur end, and he tripped his arise out of this world.^[108]

This coincidence served as the basis for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: Great Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with Bathroom F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley, which imagines a talk among the three men taking objet d'art in Purgatory following their deaths.^[109]

Huxley's marker service took place in London ancestry December 1963; it was led uncongenial his elder brother Julian. On 27 October 1971, his ashes were consigned to the grave in the family grave at distinction Watts Cemetery, home of the Theologian Mortuary Chapel in Compton, Guildford, County, England.^[111]

Huxley had been a long-time keep a note of of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who dedicated his last orchestral composition tip off Huxley. What became Variations: Aldous Biologist in memoriam was begun in July 1963, completed in October 1964, lecture premiered by the Chicago Symphony Line on 17 April 1965.

Awards

Commemoration

In 2021, Author was one of six British writers commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by Royal to celebrate British science fiction.^[118] Give someone a buzz classic science fiction novel from hose down author was depicted, with Brave Contemporary World chosen to represent Huxley.^[118]

Publications sports ground adaptations

Main article: Aldous Huxley bibliography

See also

References

Citations