Aldous Huxley

The son of biologist T. H. Huxley, Aldous Huxley had a privileged background and was educated at Eton and Oxford despite an eye infection that left him nearly blind. Having learned braille his eyesight then improved enough for him to start writing, and by the 1920s he had become a fashionable figure, producing witty and daring novels like CROME YELLOW (1921), ANTIC HAY (1923) and POINT COUNTER POINT (1928). But it is as the author of his celebrated portrayal of a nightmare future society, BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), that Huxley is remembered today. A truly visionary book, it was a watershed in Huxley's world-view as his later work became more and more optimistic - coinciding with his move to California and experimentation with mysticism and psychedelic drugs later in life. Nicholas Murray's brilliant new book has the greatest virtue of literary biographies: it makes you want to go out and read its subject's work all over again. A fascinating reassessment of one of the most interesting writers of the twentieth century.

ISBN 0349113483   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9780349113487 (What's this?)   Pages 512 Publisher Little, Brown Book Group   Weight (grammes) 350 Imprint Abacus   Published in London Format Paperback   Height (mm) 197 Publication date 06 Nov 2003   Width (mm) 125 Library of Congress PR6015.U9   Spine width (mm) 33 DEWEY 823.912   Academic level General

This excellent biography has come at the right time Jeanette Winterson, THE TIMES Generous and intelligent biography J.G. Ballard, GUARDIAN A richly detailed, thoroughly sympathetic portrait SUNDAY HERALD [Murray] provides an appropriately multifaceted portrait of Huxley, emphasising the continuities in his life as well as the radical open-mindedness that informed it. SUNDAY TIMES

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