Huxley, Aldous Leonard, 1894-1963, English author; grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he traveled widely and during the 1920s lived in Italy. He came to the United States in the 1937 and settled in California. On the verge of blindness from the time he was 16, Huxley devoted much time and energy in an effort to improve his vision. He began his literary career writing critical essays and symbolist poetry, but he soon turned to the novel. Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928) are brittle, skeptical pictures of a decadent society. Brave New World (1932), the most popular of his novels, presents a nightmarish, dystopian civilization in the 25th cent. It was followed by Eyeless in Gaza (1936), After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), Ape and Essence (1948), The Devils of Loudon (1952), and The Genius and the Goddess (1955). Marked by an exuberance of ideas and comic invention, his novels reflect, with increasing cynicism, his disgust and disillusionment with the modern world. His later writings, however, reveal a strong interest in mysticism and Eastern philosophy. His fascination with mind-expansion and experimentation with LSD prompted the writing of The Doors of Perception (1954), a long essay extremely popular in the drug-oriented 1960s and still one of his most-read books. Huxley's other works include collections of short stories, of which Mortal Coils (1922) is representative, and essays, including End and Means (1937) and Brave New World Revisited (1958).

(born July 26, 1894, Godalming, Surrey, Eng.—died Nov. 22, 1963, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) British novelist and critic. Grandson of T.H. Huxley and brother of Julian Huxley, he was partially blind from childhood. He is known for works of elegant, witty, pessimistic satire, including Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923), which established him as a major novelist, and Point Counter Point (1928). The celebrated Brave New World (1932) is a nightmarish vision of a future society that expresses his distrust of trends in politics and technology. Beginning with Eyeless in Gaza (1936), his works reveal a growing interest in Hindu philosophy and mysticism. Later works include the nonfiction The Devils of Loudun (1952) and The Doors of Perception (1954), about his experiences with hallucinogens.

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Leonard Huxley (December 11, 1860 - May 2 1933) was a British schoolteacher, writer and editor.

Biography

Family

His father was the zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Darwin's bulldog'. Leonard was educated at University College School, London, St. Andrews University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He first married Julia Arnold, daughter of Tom Arnold. She was a sister of the novelist Mrs. Humphrey Ward, niece of the poet Matthew Arnold, and granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School (immortalised as a character in Tom Brown's Schooldays).

Their four children included the biologist Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (born 1887), the writer Aldous Leonard Huxley (born 1894). Their middle son, Noel Trevenen (born in 1889) committed suicide in 1914. Their daughter, Margaret Arnold Huxley, was born in 1899 and died on October 11 1981. Julia Arnold died of cancer in 1908.

After the death of his first wife, Leonard married Rosalind Bruce, and had two further sons. The elder of these was David Bruce Huxley (born 1915), whose daughter Angela married George Pember Darwin, son of the physicist Sir Charles Galton Darwin. The younger was Nobel Prizewinning physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley (born 1917).

Work

Huxley's major biographies were the three volumes of Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley and the two volumes of Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI. He also published Thomas Henry Huxley: a character sketch, and a short biography of Darwin. He was assistant master at Charterhouse School between 1884 and 1901. He was then the assistant editor of Cornhill Magazine between 1901 and 1916, becoming its editor in 1916.

• 1900 Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. 2 vols.
• 1912 Thoughts on education drawn from the writings of Matthew Arnold (editor).
• 1913 Scott's last expedition (editor). 2 vols.
• 1918 Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI. 2 vols.
• 1920 Anniversaries, and other poems.
• 1920 Thomas Henry Huxley: a character sketch.
• 1920 Charles Darwin.
• 1926 Progress and the unfit.
• 1926 Sheaves from the Cornhill.
• 1929 Jane Welsh Carlyle: letters to her family 1839-1863 (editor).
• 1930 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: letters to her sister 1846-1859 (editor).

External links

• Works by Leonard Huxley at Project Gutenberg