aldous huxley :: essays research papers

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England on July 26, 1894 to an famed family deeply rooted in Englands literary and scientific tradition. Huxleys father, Leonard Huxley, was the son of doubting Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known biologist who gained the nick puddle "Darwins bulldog" for championing Charles Darwins evolutionary ideas. His mother, Julia Arnold, was related to the important nineteenth-century poet and essayist Matthew Arnold.Raised in this family of scientists, writers, and teachers (his father was a writer and teacher, and his mother a schoolmistress), Huxley received an excellent education, first at home, then at Eton, providing him with access to numerous fields of knowledge. Huxley was an avid student, and during his animation he was renowned as a generalist, an intellectual who had mastered the employ of the English language but was also informed astir(predicate) streetwise developments in scientific discipline and other fields. Although much of his scientific understanding was ostensiblehe was easily convinced of findings that remained somewhat on the fringe of mainstream sciencehis education at the intersection of science and literature allowed him to integrate flow scientific findings into his novels and essays in a way that few other writers of his clock were able to do.Aside from his education, another major influence on Huxleys behavior and writing was an eye disease contracted in his teenage age that left him almost blind. As a teenager Huxley had dreamed about becoming a doctor, but the degeneration of his eyesight prevented him from pursuing his chosen cargoner. It also severely restricted the activities he could pursue. Because of his near blindness, he depended intemperately on his first wife, Maria, to take care of him. Blindness and vision are motifs that permeate much of Huxleys writing.After graduating from Oxford in 1916, Huxley began to make a name for himself writing satirical pieces about the British up per class. Though these belles-lettres were skillful and gained Huxley an audience and literary name, they were generally considered to offer little abstruseness beyond their lightweight criticisms of social manners. Huxley continued to write prolifically, stooling as an essayist and journalist, and publishing four volumes of poetry before beginning to work on novels. Without giving up his other writing, beginning in 1921, Huxley produced a series of novels at an astonishing rate Crome Yellow was published in 1921, followed by Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925, and order Counter Point in 1928.