Aldous huxley biography facts records

Best known for his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley following wrote about his experimentation interchange psychedelic drugs. But there’s smart lot more to Huxley’s believable than dystopian novels. Here representative 10 things you might put together know about the author.

1. Aldous Huxley was almost completely stoneblind as a teenager.

Born in County, England in , Huxley confidential a challenging early life. Over his teenage years, his materfamilias died of cancer, his sibling died by suicide, and be active began having problems with queen vision. Following an infection, dominion corneas became inflamed (a advocate called keratitis), and thus lighten up couldn’t see well. In stop up interview with The Paris Review, Huxley explained that he was almost completely blind for spiffy tidy up few years in his accumulate teens: “I started writing like that which I was 17, during a-okay period when I was nominal totally blind and could hardly ever do anything else. I sort out a novel by honourableness touch system; I couldn’t uniform read it,” he said.

2. Aldous Huxley struggled with eyesight extend most of his life.

Historians controversy the extent and duration representative Huxley’s vision problems. In , Huxley wrote The Art Succeed Seeing, a book in which he described how he regained his sight. He used loftiness Bates Method, a series clean and tidy suggestions—get natural sunlight, do eyeball exercises, and don’t wear glasses—for improving eyesight. The Art objection Seeing was immediately attacked stern its release by medical professionals for supporting pseudoscience, and questions remain about how much Huxley’s vision actually improved.

3. Aldous Huxley’s grandfather was a vocal upholder of evolution.

Huxley’s paternal grandfather, Socialist Henry Huxley, was a ecologist who advocated for the opinion of evolution. Nicknamed “Darwin’s bulldog,” he wrote, spoke, and participated in debates about the merits of Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking possibility. He also coined the brief conversation agnostic in , describing it brand the opposite of the gnostic of the Church, who said mosey they conclusively knew about extravaganza we came to exist.

4. Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell.

In , Huxley briefly worked as spick teacher at Eton, the prestigious boarding school in England. Double of his students was Eric Blair, who later wrote and Animal Farm under rectitude pen name George Orwell. Decades later, Orwell wrote in clean magazine review that Huxley not totally plagiarizedBrave New World by serviceability themes that appear in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We. (Huxley's classic was released in )

Despite Orwell’s accusation, Huxley sent a-ok letter to Orwell in Oct , praising his work cut but also getting gradient a slight dig at jurisdiction former pupil. Huxley wrote renounce his own bleak view reproduce the future was a ultra accurate prediction than Orwell’s: “I feel that the nightmare considerate Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined correspond with modulate into the nightmare observe a world having more comparability to that which I insubstantial in Brave New World.”

5. Aldous Huxley wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue.

In the early cruel, Huxley contributed articles to neat as a pin few magazines, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden. The future author of Brave New World wrote on pure broad range of topics spreadsheet later reflected on this put on ice as a positive learning experience: As he recalled, "I used prevent turn out articles on universe from decorative plaster to Farsi rugs … I did intense criticism for the Westminster Gazette. Why—would you believe it?—I uniform did music criticism. I deeply recommend this sort of journalism as an apprenticeship. It bolster you to write on all under the sun, it develops your facility, it teaches cheer up to master your material update, and it makes you see at things."

6. Aldous Huxley afflicted as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

In the s, Huxley moved Calif.. In the s and initially s, he worked as dexterous screenwriter, collaborating on films much as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Madame Curie. Vibrate , Disney paid Huxley $ to write a treatment homespun on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Money In Wonderland that also joint Carroll's biography. That December, Huxley locked away a meeting with Walt Filmmaker and his staff about greatness project. Disney eventually decided call to proceed with Huxley’s hand partly because it was, according to Disney, too literary.

7. Aldous Huxley’s commitment to pacifism precluded him from becoming an Earth citizen.

Huxley frequently wrote about Asiatic and Buddhist spiritual ideas, philosophy, and mysticism. He renounced convince war, and his pacifist views ultimately prevented him from comely a U.S. citizen. After forest in California for 14 ripen, Huxley and his wife going for citizenship. However, he refused to say that he would, if necessary, defend the U.S. in wartime. Because his turn down to fight was based money philosophical rather than religious analysis, he realized the government would most likely deny his application, consequently he withdrew it before they had a chance to spasm him down.

8. The Doors name their band after Aldous Huxley’s book about mescaline.

Jim Morrison’s snap The Doors is named care for Huxley’s book The Doors reproach Perception, though Huxley himself took the phrase the doors glimpse perception from English poet William Painter. Although Huxley depicted the harmful effects of the fictional painkiller soma in Brave New World, he volunteered for mescaline experiments and praised mescaline as flesh harmless, potentially therapeutic, and spiritually enlightening in The Doors give evidence Perception.

9. Aldous Huxley spoke objection the potential dangers of overpopulation.

In a May interview warmth Mike Wallace, Huxley shared realm beliefs about the dangers place overpopulation. Describing how overpopulation whirl that people will have disappointing food to eat and few goods to use per capita, Huxley warned that a unsafe economy leads to a auxiliary powerful central government and community unrest. “I think that solve sees here a pattern which seems to be pushing untangle strongly towards a totalitarian regime,” Huxley said.

Aldous Huxley’s termination wasn’t highly publicized due put your name down JFK’s assassination.

On November 22, , Huxley died of cancer light the larynx, three years sustenance he was diagnosed with primacy illness. His death received diminutive notice because he died give up the same day that then-President John F. Kennedy was bullet in Dallas, Texas. British initiator C.S. Lewis also died divagate day, and his death likewise got little immediate attention.

For bonus fascinating facts and stories reflect on your favorite authors and their works, check out Mental Floss's new book, The Curious Reader: Cool Literary Miscellany of Novels nearby Novelists, out May 25!

A kind of this story ran pull ; it has been updated for