@
Aldous Huxley 
was one of the 
outstanding 
English novelists 
of his time. His 
fine satirical 
sense combined 
with the 
detachment that 
came from a 
scientific 
background gave 
him a magisterial 
view of the 
absurdity of the 
human condition. 
He was a 
pessimist who 
could see the 
funny side
#
At Eton the young 
Huxley suffered an 
eye ailment that 
rendered him 
nearly blind and 
ended his plans 
for a career in 
biology. He 
turned to writing, 
and his collection 
of short stories, 
Limbo, published 
in 1920, revealed 
a precocious and 
a major talent
#
Huxley made his 
name with his 
first novel, 
Crome Yellow 
(1921), in which 
grotesque 
characters 
assembled at a 
country house 
lust after power, 
sex and other 
gratification. Such 
bleak but amused 
portraits of 
modern society 
were a dominant 
theme of his work
#
Huxley published 
his most famous 
novel, Brave New 
World, in 1932. It 
was a joyless
vision of the 
future, in which 
populations are 
controlled not by 
political pressure
but by biological
engineering
#
Brave New World 
marked the end 
of Huxley's dark 
period. He now 
embarked on an 
optimistic spiritual
journey. A more 
hopeful tone 
pervaded his 
writings, fuelled
by an increasing 
fascination with
eastern mysticism
#
Huxley found , 
mystical exper-
ience hard to 
achieve without 
assistance. He 
used mescaline, 
a hallucinatory 
drug common in 
central America,
to induce a state
similar to reli-
gious ecstasy. 
The Doors of 
Perception was
a sober account 
of his experiments
#
After his death 
Huxley's writings 
on mescaline led 
to his adoption as 
an apostle of 
Sixties drug 
culture. Most of 
his disciples were 
less serious in 
intent than was 
Huxley himself, 
but it was an 
appropriate 
legacy to one 
whose early novels
had reflected the 
nihilistic despair 
of his generation
@