Biography of Aldous Huxley
Uploaded by sls465 on Apr 19, 2007
Biography of Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley, English novelist, established himself as one of the premiere fiction writers of the twentieth century. Such works as Brave New World and Doors of Perception sparked positive reviews from critics and readers across the globe. He was born on July 26, 1894, in Godalming, Surrey, England. Ever since he was very young, Huxley’s peers and family considered him to be “different”. This was not necessarily a bad thing to anyone. Aldous’ brother considered this to be a form of “superiority”. It was a good life for Aldous, as he was a part of a family that was considered to be some of the most distinguished members of that part of the ruling class in England that made of the intellectual elite. His first real family tragedy was at the age of fourteen when his mother died of cancer. All of his success took place even though he was stricken with keratitis and became nearly blind at the age of sixteen. Not long after his vision became impaired, Huxley entered the literary world by attending Oxford. He met with writers such as Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell, who got him off to a good start with his writing career. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and in 1916 got through college, graduating from Ballial College, Oxford. Here, he learned to write with elegance and wit, which earned him even more respect and an exceptional fan base for the remainder of his writing career.
In 1916 Huxley published his first book, a collection of poems, which was called The Burning Wheel. Over the next twenty years, he released four more very popular novels before releasing Brave New World in 1932. This was definitely Aldous Huxley’s most popular book ever. It was about a futuristic utopian society. In this “utopia”, human beings are scientifically created in labs from cells, and they are brainwashed from a very young age to conform to the standards of the world. A drug, soma, is taken to ease people’s pain and unhappiness. If someone is considered to be “unhappy”, they are sent away from the larger society to live on a desolate island with other people of the same kind. The Utopians go to great lengths to deny the unpleasantness of...